Well, I was almost too embarrassed to post this but here's my report from Tues/Wed last week. We left Neah Bay around 9:30 AM on Tues after icing the boat down. We ran out to Tatoosh Island and turned SW to run down the Juan de Fuca canyon. Temps were 60F as soon as we got into the 1000' water and they slowly increased most of the way out. We deployed gear (mostly purple X-rap 20's) when we got to about 3000' of water and 63F temps. We trolled out to about 4700', maybe 5000'. We saw temps at high at 64.5. We trolled N, S, E, W. The water was pretty clean but never bright blue. We got one hit early on but it didn't stick. A bit later we got another one that did stick. We trolled back over that spot several times with no additional hits. We didn't see any sharks, whales or sunfish and hardly any other signs of life (e.g. only a single bird here and there and we never saw tuna jumping). The only real sign of life we found was a HUGE pod of pacific white sided dolphins. There were 100's of dolphins in this group. That got us excited for awhile but it was for naught. We stopped trolling around 9:30 and took turns at a night watch on the S. side of the canyon in about 3500' of water.
We drifted for awhile looking at the meteor showers (the sky was partially clear) and observing sea life in the water with a spot light. Around 2-3AM, the S. winds came up a little and it got a bit bumpy. To smooth things out and to get to some new water, I motored to the N. side of the end of the canyon. We trolled from 5:30AM to 7:30 AM with no hits. All total it was 110 miles of trolling with two hits and one very expensive tuna landed. To make matters worse, when I got back to the dock, the boat in the slip next to me was just getting ready to clean his fish. He did an over nighter starting a day earlier than I. I didn't watch him unload all his fish, but I'm guessing he had around 50. I always expect to be outfished by this guy and his crew but to be outfished 50 to 1 was a little tough. To be fair, this guy is an expert and if I knew 1/3 as much as he knows about fishing, I'd probably know twice what I do now.
Sat. we also gave it a brief try. We ran down to the S. end of the canyon and a little inland to get our chinook. We had two 20lb fish by around 1PM and figured as long as we were 30 miles offshore, we might as well run a little west to explore for tuna. We weren't planning on tuna fishing so we only had enough ice for a few if we found them. I wanted to find the clear blue water but we never did. Again we found 64F water around 4700' deep but after 1-2 hours of trolling we decided to run N and then back in on the little canyon between Nitinate and JDF. We didn't see anything that looked particularly promising - greenish water, no sharp temp breaks but we did see more life - several sunfish and a few thrasher sharks We elected not to fish and ran back to Neah for a 7:30 or so arrival. A couple of other boats that went out for the day also came back empty. However, my neighbor in the slip next to me, got his fish again (another 2-day trip). I don't know how many but it probably was a bunch.
Other than the failed tuna attempt, my 8 day trip to Neah was awesome, we got kings every day and filled our limits with decent coho. The kings on Swifsure were tending to run around 8-10 lbs but most days we were able to pick through those and get limits (1ea) of 15+ lb fish. We filled the remainder of our 2 salmon limits with hatchery coho. The coho seem to be running a bit small this year with most hatchery fish still in the 4-6lb range. We were able to find some larger ones down deep (100-150'). I'll get a few more tuna trips in before the season is over but probably won't give that an attempt until weekend after next. Hopefully, the clear water will move in closer by then and we'll get some sharper temperature breaks.
We drifted for awhile looking at the meteor showers (the sky was partially clear) and observing sea life in the water with a spot light. Around 2-3AM, the S. winds came up a little and it got a bit bumpy. To smooth things out and to get to some new water, I motored to the N. side of the end of the canyon. We trolled from 5:30AM to 7:30 AM with no hits. All total it was 110 miles of trolling with two hits and one very expensive tuna landed. To make matters worse, when I got back to the dock, the boat in the slip next to me was just getting ready to clean his fish. He did an over nighter starting a day earlier than I. I didn't watch him unload all his fish, but I'm guessing he had around 50. I always expect to be outfished by this guy and his crew but to be outfished 50 to 1 was a little tough. To be fair, this guy is an expert and if I knew 1/3 as much as he knows about fishing, I'd probably know twice what I do now.
Sat. we also gave it a brief try. We ran down to the S. end of the canyon and a little inland to get our chinook. We had two 20lb fish by around 1PM and figured as long as we were 30 miles offshore, we might as well run a little west to explore for tuna. We weren't planning on tuna fishing so we only had enough ice for a few if we found them. I wanted to find the clear blue water but we never did. Again we found 64F water around 4700' deep but after 1-2 hours of trolling we decided to run N and then back in on the little canyon between Nitinate and JDF. We didn't see anything that looked particularly promising - greenish water, no sharp temp breaks but we did see more life - several sunfish and a few thrasher sharks We elected not to fish and ran back to Neah for a 7:30 or so arrival. A couple of other boats that went out for the day also came back empty. However, my neighbor in the slip next to me, got his fish again (another 2-day trip). I don't know how many but it probably was a bunch.
Other than the failed tuna attempt, my 8 day trip to Neah was awesome, we got kings every day and filled our limits with decent coho. The kings on Swifsure were tending to run around 8-10 lbs but most days we were able to pick through those and get limits (1ea) of 15+ lb fish. We filled the remainder of our 2 salmon limits with hatchery coho. The coho seem to be running a bit small this year with most hatchery fish still in the 4-6lb range. We were able to find some larger ones down deep (100-150'). I'll get a few more tuna trips in before the season is over but probably won't give that an attempt until weekend after next. Hopefully, the clear water will move in closer by then and we'll get some sharper temperature breaks.
. Very cool overnighting it. You guys do that quite often which is cool. I really want to try it this year. Not much sleeping room in my boat but the captains seat is pretty comfy so I'm sure a couple of hours taking turns etc would work. Keep us posted on future trips. This weekend could be pretty good weather wise. We wil see on Thursday or Friday.
