Well out again after 6 days off, mainly due to the howling winds and rainstorms.
I bit late but lines down at just after 7:30am. Not quite as many boats as I expected for 1st Sept.
Decided once again not to run toMuir but adopted the same tactics as last Saturday. Gibbs spoon one side and AP herring spoon the other trolling west off the Bluffs with riggers at 45’ as before. Got as far as the tin shack with only a hatchery coho, plus one unclipped coho released to show for it.
Turned back east against the slowing ebb and around 8:45am in the harbour mouth had a big hit on the AP spoon. The fish ran very hard , with some shorter runs after so he gave a good account of himself for the 12lb fish we finally netted.
Spoons back down after the “gear clearing” policy we always follow with fish on. Got another smallish hatch coho on the AP spoon and debated whether to keep it but we released it. The gods must have smiled upon us for that release because just 3 minutes after the coho the AP spoon went off again. Yet another exciting fish that ran away hard then rushed back to the boat. Eventually we boated a beauty of 16 lbs (78cm).
Gear down again and trolled around in the same area and got another nice hit yet again on the AP spoon. This one stayed down shaking and did not run but messed about under the boat. When he came up he was just 10lb, but still great and it was only 10am.
The Gibbs did nothing all this time so we swopped it out for an AP sandlance for a while, then tried little herring in t.h. on that side. Only got a couple of very small coho on that which went back.
However, with end of the ebb and the start of the flood it all went dead and even the AP spoon ceased catching. So just before noon, as the ESE wind got up, we called it a day.
All in all, yet another great morning off Sooke!!
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