As promised - my report from this weekend at Swiftsure:
I dragged the boat out to Neah Bay on Friday and got set up for an early morning departure to Swiftsure bank on Sat. An outgoing tide made the end of the strait a little lumpy. Nothing too bad, but short frequency, 2-4' washing machine like conditions near the end of the strait were encountered. We hit the bank by 6AM. I was on the US side of the line all day on Sat. and we boated 24 springs to find 4 worth keeping. Nothing too huge, the ones we kept were between 10 and 14lbs. All cut bright red. Near the mid afternoon slack, the bite really picked up and that's when we got most of our hits. We fished a green and white 6" tomic plug on one side and the iron needle spoon (pearlescent glow) on the other. Both produced well. In the afternoon while just SSW of J buoy, we trolled up 3 hali on the plug. All were really nice fish, probably 20,30 and 35lbs. All were released as the American quota was gone in the 4 days it was open in May. The hali took a bit longer to land on the 10.5' G. Loomis salmon rod!
Sunday the plan was to fish the early AM slack on the Canadian side in the hopes of picking up a hali or two where and when we could keep them. On the way out, I passed the largest group of humpback whales I've ever encountered. At one time, I counted at least a dozen spouts in the air simultaneously but there were more whales present than that. Probably at least 15. All where working bait on the NE end of the bank. I probably should have stopped there and just fished salmon as I likely would have been done by 8AM. However, we were on a mission for hali and the slack wouldn't last long. So we proceeded to just N of J buoy just outside the west end of the closure. We started jigging with gibbs cod jigs but I quickly switched one rod over to a spreader bar with some octopus and herring on it. As luck would have it, we couldn't find a hali in the 1-2 hours we had before the current started moving again. So we tried to troll up a couple using the same tactics as the day before but on the other side of the line - no luck. Around 11AM after 5 solid hours of fishing and 3 hours of trolling, we had boated and released one modest size spring. There appeared to be a lot more bird and whale activity on the American side of the line. So at that point, I decided we might as well fish the American side and at least pick up our salmon. We eventually picked up our 4 springs but I did wind up keeping one smaller than I'd like just to be finished. I didn't get a hit on the iron needle spoon on Sun, but I did get several fish on a UV/mirror flasher + Olympic Tackle white squid imitation. Most of the fish were coughing up 2-4 inch squid when they hit the deck. All fish were caught with 180-300' out on the cable and most were in the 220-250' range. I fished a bit higher up but was catching more coho than springs above 180'
I hit the dock back at Neah Bay by about 2:30 and made it on the road around 4:30 after cleaning up everything, vacuum packing the fish (we're allowed to do that in nice individual portions on our side of the line). Made it home a little after 8:30. All-in-all, it was a pretty good father's day weekend.