Finally getting the chance to participate in this great forum based on our fishing exploits. The wife and I just got back from 5 days in Nootka. I fished with buddies 3 years ago on the buddy's boat but this is the first time in our boat so we obviously had a learning curve as to how to fish Nootka. The wife also had a learning curve with the netting process, the trolling process and the science of figuring out where the fish were in the water column. Wednesday and Thursday, we got into 3 nice 15lb+ fish but unfortunately only 1 got into the boat. Like a said, netting was a challenge. I take responsibility for lifting up the rod tip without really seeing what was going on in front and the wife not experienced on netting. Basically we weren't communicating properly. Then we worked very hard to try to find fish and as others mentioned, it was extremely slow on Friday and Saturday. I'm wondering if that was due to the 7000 fish netted by the commercial boats Thursday night. Then the rain came Saturday afternoon and it poured steadily all through the night. We were pretty discouraged and were about to go home Sunday morning with our tail between our legs but decided to try one more time before leaving to go home on Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny morning and we were hoping that the rain and brought the fish inside.
It sure must have because we had an Epic day on the water. In 3 short hours, we found the secret sauce in terms of the trolling line, the lure, the depth and the length off the clip. It all came together in front of Camel Rock using an Irish Cream Skinny G spoon. We hit on every pass, catching 4 nice springs, the biggest about 17 lbs, 2 cookie cutter 9 pounders and 1 around 11 lb. Besides those, we were catching jacks in all the other passes. We obviously worked out the netting issues and were communicating great. My wife learned a ton about how to fish for springs in traffic. It was definitely the best day I've ever experienced catching chinook. Needless to say, we feel with the experience and knowledge we gained during the week, we're considering coming back next year! What looked like a dismal week of fishing turned into a success in one great morning of fishing.