Steelhead Fishing -Underwater Footage

Took a trip to the coast with Dylan and met up with Drake, a fishing guide in the area. We hiked up a local river and caught some nice fish. This gave us a chance to play with the underwater housing for the camera. The footage is a bit shaky, but not a bad experimental try.

Bushwhacking th Coast Range!

Ran back over the hill to the coast to take advantage of the couple days of dry weather. Once we got over the pass and took a peek at the river, we noticed it was down and in great condition! This watershed has some of the most amazing old-growth timber, including Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce.


Dylan took this shot of me dropping down between a fallen tree. Definitely a DENSE forest.


These trees were larger than life. We were in the land of the giants.




Dylan, Taylor, and I, geared up to start whackin brush.


This lush rain forest is full of moss, lichens, mushrooms, and other forms of life that need this moist, thick, dense forest to survive.



At one point, we came across an old road.


This helped the bush-whacking for about 100yds... At the end of the road, we noticed an old bridge crossing the creek.


We walked down the creek, took some pics, and kept on scaling the river banks.



Here, I was just playin with how long I could leave it open without ruining the shot...


We made our way up, from hole to hole, and finally Taylor hooks into one. It looked like a good head-shaker at first, but then......We got to see it. . . Poor little Boot! However, we made SURE that Taylor got a picture with his prized catch!


I mean, this was a pretty nasty-looking fish. Along the river rocks, I think I noticed his last Spawning buddy! ...they looked about the same! hahaha!


The hike itself was a good couple miles through some of the thickest coastal rainforest. I admit, I'm a little sore today in the legs! Crawling up and over downed trees that are larger than cars in diameter can do that to ya! But its SOOOO worth the solitude!! Fish on!



Looks like its time to start gearing up for Winter Steelhead! We saw a couple of those caught. Time to scale down the gear and start targeting the Steel!

Killer Whales off Rockaway

While attempting some inshore drifts for halibut, we came across a female orca and her calf off our port. This is the only good picture I got of the mother. They were already past us by the time I could snap any pictures of the smaller calf. Was AMAZING to see those magnificent creatures so close and in the wild!

Humbolt Squid Caught While Rockfishing

Just like Forrest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates...You never know what you're gonna get". Lake Pacific has provided me, once again, with this fascination. Saturday was no exception. . .

I had the invite from Brad (GreenButtSkunk), to go fish for some rockfish and maybe in-shore halibut. I jumped at the opportunity! My friend Dylan (ZodiakFisherman), and I cruised over to Little Italy early Saturday morning to join Brad and Dan (74 CJ5). It was so cold Saturday morning, that the walk ramp going down to Big Tuna Marine was iced over. Sliding down with rods, bags, food, etc, we clumsily made our way to the boat, like deer on ice. Once it began to get light, we made our way out of the marina.



We found our depth, shut down the boat and dropped the baits. We were in search of in-shore halibut.
Not more than 5 minutes later, a loud PFFFFSSHHHHHHHH sound came up RIGHT where I was staring! A baby humpback whale peeked its head up, took a breath, and I swear it was staring right at us, curious as we were. Brad looks and says, "I wonder where Mama is..." A few seconds later, here comes Big Mama, swimming behind her calf. Such a massive and beautiful creature! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera at the time...only a rod and reel...
Once we found our halibut spot, we made a few drifts at different depths. Unfortunately, they didn't produce. What we did notice, is TONS of jellyfish floating below us. You could see them at all depths.


We decided to run up to a reef he knew of and tried a few drifts there. A few drifts brought numorous rockfish, quillbacks, and lingcod. Here's Dylan with one of the smaller Lings.


Dan also got into a nice ling on the same drift.


We picked up lines and ran back up for another drift and Dylan hooks into a pretty large fish... or so we thought. He said he couldn't feel any real headshakes...just long pulls. but fought him good. Line would peel off the reel at times. He finally got it up to color and we noticed it was a HUMBOLDT SQUID!




We honestly didn't know what we should do with it. I grabbed the underwater video camera and started filming. It was amazing the way this thing would shoot down 20ft, but get pulled right back up. What looks like its mouth, is really a vent...for the mouth is really the beak in the middle~



I actually got some pretty good video! Had great clarity in the water!
We decided not to keep the squid, and it eventually popped off the line so we didn't have to deal with it!

That reef produced all kinds of 'creatures from the deep'.
Another fish pulled up this weekend was this Ratfish we caught, while fishing for some inshore halibut.






This was another first for me, aside from the Squid and the Humpbacks.

We didn't have a lot of time to fish, and we wanted to be back inside before the bar started standing up. Although we didn't get our halibut, we still had a great time, a few firsts, and a few Lings for the dinner table.

Hope its not the last run of 2008!
Had to end the day with an Ice cold Fat Tire.

Thanks again, Brad!

Coast Guard Rescue

Okay, here are some pictures from today's rescue at sea. These are only a few, for I'm pretty tired and am going to crash pretty soon. Bed is sounding pretty good right now.
I'll let the others give the details, but in short, here ya go.

I was out with Bud, Fishoholic, and Chasin' Tale (sp) going after some tuna, Tuesday morning. Once we got out there, we heard Ken, Crazyfish, on the Spotted Owl, on the radion mention their boat was taking on water. They chose to keep fishing and stuck by the rest of the pack. We asked him to keep us up to date every 10 mins or so as to their status. Reports were, that their pump was bailing water faster than it was coming in.

Afternoon: They started in a little earlier, before Tuna Time, SeaFox, Thunder, and us, Seelicious, picked up gear and ran. While running in, we heard, that up ahead, the Spotted Owl was taking on water more rapidly, and the motor had died. We heard, "We're dead in the water". They were about 5 miles ahead of us, and we ran to them to assist in any way we could.

By this time, they had hailed the Coasties. 2 47's from Garibaldi were en route, as well as the copter from Hammond. We all sat nearby for any help we could give.


Within just a few minutes, you could hear the thumping of the bird coming from the north.



The copter hovered closer, and let down the rescue swimmer to get in the boat and assess the situation.




Once on board, the swimmer radio'ed above to drop a portable pump to try and syphen out the water, and tow the boat back to port. The copter hovered in extremely close to the water, kicking up a big spray, leaned to the side, and dumped the pump overboard.


The pump was dropped, the swimmer got back in, swam out to the pump, drug it back to the boat, and assembled it. after a couple pulls, it began running and started dumping water out of the boat.


At this point, the cavalry, 2 47's were on the horizon, crashing through the waves toward us at what had to be 30-some knots. Once arrived, they pulled alongside Crazyfish and Spotted Owl.


Once they had the situation under control, the four of us that were there to assist, left and continued our way back to the barn. John, Fishoholic, has some more great pics, that I can't wait to see!

I was switching between the digital still camera and the Video camera. The rescue swimmer being deployed is on video and currently being edited for youtube, or somewhere similar. That video is coming soon!


Glad everything turned out alright. It was a situation that could've been ended up much worse, but thanks to quick action by the Coast Guard, it was avoided. All hats off to every one of you!