Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
I approach chinook fishing in the salt chuck the way I approach steelhead fishing in rivers:
It's more rewarding to me to catch 4 steelhead in 4 new spots then catch 10 in a spot that I might have to share with 30 of my BFF's, each in their own boat.
With that in mind, this summer I decided to go to North Coast and fish new water: last year I found too many of my old spots clogged with boats, some of the boat captains having way more aggressive fishing plans then I had.... so my plan this year was to bypass all the old spots and seek out new ones.
It's one of my pleasures to study charts of new water and after finding the potential protected anchorages, look for the goalie's mitt in the rocks. That's the spot where bait stacks up. And then figure which tides to focus on when I finally fish it.
Got lots of springs using that approach, though consistent with the way this summer went for some other fishers I've spoken to, chinook were generally smaller then past years. I got a few mid-20's, maybe a low 30 or two which were all released, but no doubt, I could count the bigger fish on one hand.
The bonus were some huge coho, though. Some bigger then the springs.
The first week of the trip was with my girlfriend. I've already learned that when she's on board, there's more hiking and beach walking going on then fishing. But that was o.k. The weather was stunning, always nice to share my bunk in the forepeak with this gal, and then there were the BBQ's on the beaches and the gorgeous sunsets.
https://i.imgur.com/6f6JPyc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Kfy3syz.jpg
She even got a 20 pounder the first time she picked up a ro (on a mooched piece of bait I should add)
https://i.imgur.com/nsKatkV.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/HtaYNHI.jpg
After she returned to shore I fired up the Suzuki and headed north and didn't stop heading north until I got up into the Grenville Channel area. Another lesson I learned from steelhead fishing: if the motor of your rig has cooled down after fishing a spot, you were in that spot too long so get going and find another one.
Did lots of that which meant lots of hours on the Suzuki this summer. It ran like a sewing machine, though. I was thrilled at her behavior...I would have brought her into my sleeping bag each night if the stainless four blades on her tail weren't so sharp...
When you cover lots of water you get the bonus of seeing what swims through it. Here's a shot of the Bubble Curtain phenomenon. Cooperative hunting at its best---I've seen it before but never had a camera in my hand waiting to snap it:
https://i.imgur.com/NWFtBqU.jpg
These humpbacks came so close to the boat I turned off my electronics:
https://i.imgur.com/t7X5cQN.jpg
My dog was hyperventilating with all the racket going on from their blow holes.
Speaking of electronics, part of the joy this summer was fiddling with the new screens and transducers and sonar modules I installed in the boat last winter:
I welded on a bracket to hold my new Furuno DFF3D multi-beam transducer:
https://i.imgur.com/g88UloD.jpg
The returns you get are pretty cool to see:
https://i.imgur.com/pxsseE3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/blbyLbx.jpg
That's true side-scan technology: you can see the bait balls from the top and from their sides, and with the tree transducers firing, can tell which way the bait balls are moving. Does it catch me more fish? Probably not but it's a bonus to see the structure you're over and where the bait balls are in relation to it
My stand alone fish finder and the $ 50.00 P66 skimmer transducer its hooked up to buy me my fish. Just a simple shot of gear in relation to bait ball is all I need:
https://i.imgur.com/JlUkEbX.jpg
Here's the same type of picture from a wide-beam CHIRP:
https://i.imgur.com/Njg0WZH.jpg
My favorite moment was having rod in hand and watching my gear travel through the water under the boat on the new multi-beam. A blank screen, no bait. I didn't have much hope. Then all of a sudden the gear "target" wasn't there any more and a nano-second later I got that hand-held violent take down that keeps me coming back to the steelhead and chinook table.
I scratched my head over why the spring didn't create a "target" but that's not the first time I hooked a spring on what I saw as a blank screen on very sophisticated transducers.
But even a three week trip had me wishing I had more days ahead of me. It's cramped in the small forepeak I have on my boat but man oh man, out on the dance floor at dawn firing up the coffee with the whole dawn ahead of you---I could easily do that for 3 months straight, day after day after day...
I'm already looking for a bigger boat to press even farther north next year. Maybe next year I'll end up deep into Alaska which would be fine as that's where my obsession with big chinook first began when fishing the Kenai back in the 80's.
Last day of the trip I got the nice surprise:
https://i.imgur.com/T4STv8z.jpg
What could be finer: halibut masala, spuds, and a glass of good wine to finish off the trip!
https://i.imgur.com/PwbXJCn.jpg
It's killing me thinking of how many months I have to go now before next year....and that being said, with the new potential Orca no-fish zones, it's hard to stay up-beat as to whether or not we'll have the same freedoms we had out on the water as we had in the good-old days.
But come to think of it, the good-old days are TODAY.
Get out there and enjoy them while you can!
It's more rewarding to me to catch 4 steelhead in 4 new spots then catch 10 in a spot that I might have to share with 30 of my BFF's, each in their own boat.
With that in mind, this summer I decided to go to North Coast and fish new water: last year I found too many of my old spots clogged with boats, some of the boat captains having way more aggressive fishing plans then I had.... so my plan this year was to bypass all the old spots and seek out new ones.
It's one of my pleasures to study charts of new water and after finding the potential protected anchorages, look for the goalie's mitt in the rocks. That's the spot where bait stacks up. And then figure which tides to focus on when I finally fish it.
Got lots of springs using that approach, though consistent with the way this summer went for some other fishers I've spoken to, chinook were generally smaller then past years. I got a few mid-20's, maybe a low 30 or two which were all released, but no doubt, I could count the bigger fish on one hand.
The bonus were some huge coho, though. Some bigger then the springs.
The first week of the trip was with my girlfriend. I've already learned that when she's on board, there's more hiking and beach walking going on then fishing. But that was o.k. The weather was stunning, always nice to share my bunk in the forepeak with this gal, and then there were the BBQ's on the beaches and the gorgeous sunsets.
https://i.imgur.com/6f6JPyc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Kfy3syz.jpg
She even got a 20 pounder the first time she picked up a ro (on a mooched piece of bait I should add)
https://i.imgur.com/nsKatkV.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/HtaYNHI.jpg
After she returned to shore I fired up the Suzuki and headed north and didn't stop heading north until I got up into the Grenville Channel area. Another lesson I learned from steelhead fishing: if the motor of your rig has cooled down after fishing a spot, you were in that spot too long so get going and find another one.
Did lots of that which meant lots of hours on the Suzuki this summer. It ran like a sewing machine, though. I was thrilled at her behavior...I would have brought her into my sleeping bag each night if the stainless four blades on her tail weren't so sharp...
When you cover lots of water you get the bonus of seeing what swims through it. Here's a shot of the Bubble Curtain phenomenon. Cooperative hunting at its best---I've seen it before but never had a camera in my hand waiting to snap it:
https://i.imgur.com/NWFtBqU.jpg
These humpbacks came so close to the boat I turned off my electronics:
https://i.imgur.com/t7X5cQN.jpg
My dog was hyperventilating with all the racket going on from their blow holes.
Speaking of electronics, part of the joy this summer was fiddling with the new screens and transducers and sonar modules I installed in the boat last winter:
I welded on a bracket to hold my new Furuno DFF3D multi-beam transducer:
https://i.imgur.com/g88UloD.jpg
The returns you get are pretty cool to see:
https://i.imgur.com/pxsseE3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/blbyLbx.jpg
That's true side-scan technology: you can see the bait balls from the top and from their sides, and with the tree transducers firing, can tell which way the bait balls are moving. Does it catch me more fish? Probably not but it's a bonus to see the structure you're over and where the bait balls are in relation to it
My stand alone fish finder and the $ 50.00 P66 skimmer transducer its hooked up to buy me my fish. Just a simple shot of gear in relation to bait ball is all I need:
https://i.imgur.com/JlUkEbX.jpg
Here's the same type of picture from a wide-beam CHIRP:
https://i.imgur.com/Njg0WZH.jpg
My favorite moment was having rod in hand and watching my gear travel through the water under the boat on the new multi-beam. A blank screen, no bait. I didn't have much hope. Then all of a sudden the gear "target" wasn't there any more and a nano-second later I got that hand-held violent take down that keeps me coming back to the steelhead and chinook table.
I scratched my head over why the spring didn't create a "target" but that's not the first time I hooked a spring on what I saw as a blank screen on very sophisticated transducers.
But even a three week trip had me wishing I had more days ahead of me. It's cramped in the small forepeak I have on my boat but man oh man, out on the dance floor at dawn firing up the coffee with the whole dawn ahead of you---I could easily do that for 3 months straight, day after day after day...
I'm already looking for a bigger boat to press even farther north next year. Maybe next year I'll end up deep into Alaska which would be fine as that's where my obsession with big chinook first began when fishing the Kenai back in the 80's.
Last day of the trip I got the nice surprise:
https://i.imgur.com/T4STv8z.jpg
What could be finer: halibut masala, spuds, and a glass of good wine to finish off the trip!
https://i.imgur.com/PwbXJCn.jpg
It's killing me thinking of how many months I have to go now before next year....and that being said, with the new potential Orca no-fish zones, it's hard to stay up-beat as to whether or not we'll have the same freedoms we had out on the water as we had in the good-old days.
But come to think of it, the good-old days are TODAY.
Get out there and enjoy them while you can!
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