Jeff Head: 7/23/2010

Dad and I hit Inner Elliott at 5 am, dredged that until 8 am, and then said ‘enough’ and busted out to Jeff Head for the first time ever. Found ourselves amongst many other boats including the two big charters. Thought this might suck when the charter was not moving and their clients were jigging for Sand Dab, and coming up empty handed. Nevertheless, dropped the wire and balls and proceeded on as it looked a heck of alot more fishier than EB. Was marking all sorts of bait and fish, but deep. Finally had a decent resident Ho to hand, 23″ but not much at all in its gullet. Thought it was a BM at first because we picked it up in 250′ of water with 100’+ of cable out. Trolled for a bit more, and then pulled it all up to Sand Dab jig for a couple nice pan fryers to hand.

EB: 1 hit, on briefly, but came unbuttoned, 1 shaker (dogfish food)

JH: 1 hit, 23″ Coho, (wood shampoo), 2 shakers (released and probably food for the dogfish), 8 Flounder (2 retained), 1 Greenling (released), 1 Bullhead (released)

I’d been reading alot about Jeff Head, but never fished it b4 until today, after seeing all the reports, felt fortunate to have picked up a keeper Silver when our neighboring boats weren’t so lucky.

The lucky lure was a double jointed Coho Killer in Purple Haze and Cotton Candy joined with a small ring.  Fished down at 120′ of cable with an Army Truck Flasher.  I guess it was a Rainbow colored armada that the resident Coho could not refuse. 

We quickly remembered how much we missed the tase of fresh silver salmon on the dinner table.  Later that evening our family enjoyed barbequed Coho, sashimi wild Sockeye that I’d have prepared, fresh greens, and nice Chardonnay.

I just love salmon season, and love it especially when we can get out and catch fish when visibly nobody else is having very much luck.

Here is the link to Jeff Head and where I was generally fishing.  It was slack tide, so following the chart, went to the northerly quadrant towards Kingston and fished in 250’+ of water.  

Here are a couple of threads from other fisherman that were also fishing alongside us:

Area 10….only saw one caught

by TrollKing on Fri Jul 23, 2010 3:05 pm

fished about 5 hours this morning, started at Jeff Head, saw a 12# caught, had reports from Kingston and Monroe, no joy…ran down to Yeomalt, saw lots of bait sign but no fish for us! A couple shakers, using Cookies and Cream, Irish Cream, and Red Racer spoons on our boat.

Re: EBAY roll call…

by rogue fanatic on Fri Jul 23, 2010 11:46 am

I decided against West Point and headed North. Not a whole lot better- fished West side of Possession and went 0-fer and saw no nets. Headed to Kingston where All-Star and Tyee Charters were working and saw 2 nets fly for about 50 boats. I thin I’m done for awhile unless I hear of things picking up…

Re: EBAY roll call…

by medic_man on Sat Jul 24, 2010 7:38 am

hit the bay yesterday evening. decent north wind made it kinda bumpy. fished from 1700-2100, not even a bump. heard of a couple shakers. fish checker had 10 fish all day, 6 from the bay (must have been the morning) and 4 from MA 9. marked some small bait balls and a handful of fish between the east waterway and the ferry dock.

Re: Whos in MA9 + 10 Sat?

by ShoreSling_r on Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:12 am

Has been frustrating for us ever since the stellar opening day. Getting up and out at O’Dark Thirty hasn’t helped our fortunes lately, so we are sleeping in before heading out at 7am. Not sure where MGoBlue is going to lead us today, but we’ll be out somewhere in 9 or 10 hoping to scratch out a nookie or two. LOL there’s few places on the map we haven’t tried the last week… marking bait and fish at alot of spots but not finding any willing biters. But today is a new day…

Welcome back Brandon, Kade, and Kamden: 07/22/10

One of my good buddies Brandon returned to the States after a 4 year stint in Korea.  Even though we’ve never fished together he wanted to get his twin boys out to experience the boat, water and try our luck at some perch fishing on Lake Sammamish.

We met up after 1pm in Factoria, hoping the weather would get sunny after a cooler and cloud covered morning, we opted to head to Newport Shores and launch in the hopes of finding some willing Perch.  The wind did not cooperate and I forgot my anchor, so wind drifting along wasn’t the best option in picking up the yellow barred fish.  After a few attempts around Newcastle Park, some bays, I decided to head over to the Seahawks area, where I knew some good old wood pilings existed and we could at least tie the bowline up one of those pilings and stay in one place.

After a few casts, I had one on, a small eager perch on a small Eagle claw hook tipped with nightcrawler.  I handed the rod to one of his boys and they screamed in fear.  They absolutely didn’t want anything to do with the fish or being on the boat, complaining that they wanted to go home.  We release the little guy and recasted, after a few minutes we didn’t have a strike so Brandon decided to put the whole crawler on the hook and chuck it out to pass the time.  Not long after, his rod doubled over and put a nice bend in the Zebco combo.  A nice sized smallmouth to hand! We came out for Perch but instead found a nice area of Smallmouth!  We’d pick up a more bites from smallies and also a couple more perch, but the final tally was 3 to 1 smallmouth.

We had enough of the fishing and ended up motoring down to Coulon Park, where the boys could play at the playground and we moored up for a dinner of Ivars with friends Jae and Sun.  All in all, a fun close outing and was a great opportunity to introduce the boys to their first fishing outing.  When we asked them if they wanted to go again, they eagerly both said ‘yes’.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get them out on the water again in the future and they remember the day they went fishing on Lake Washington.

Jeff H. Master long liner! 07/21/10

Went up to Rattlesnake for a few hours as I wanted to witness firsthand at Jeff H’s longlining technique for pulling trout from the depths.  Jeff really has it dialed in a and I think he’ll probably be the best Chironomid fisherman in a the next year surpassing Chuck G. for his innovative and deadly techniques at tying and understanding the challenges and psychi of the trout behaivour. 

I ended up with 1 fish to Jeff’s 10+ that he hooked and release right beside each other.  I noticed that he was using a more aggressive full sink, likely a 6-8″ per second non-density compensated line with his Amber Chiron and Chromie combo.  It proved to be deadly!  Several nice size and silvery triploids to hand and other nicely conditioned fish.

The day was warm, sunny and the surface temp was 63 degrees, with it likely being about 10 degrees cooler at the bottom where we were marking fish on the Fishin’ buddy at 40′.

I’ll have to hone in this technique but have a good gist of whats needed… extreme patience!

MA-9 Opener: July 16th, 2010

Jeff and I decided to give our favorite Kitsap beach a try as I’d heared some filtered reports of it fishing well a week prior from a fly guy who was fishing for SRC, but had gotten into 5 nice Coho of 5-6 lbs.  I’d also seen good reports from other fellows indicating slashing fish at bait balls, so off we went, 5:35 ferry out of Edmonds to Kingston.  When we arrived, I noticed a familiar car in the lot, none other than the legendary Mr. Miyawaki.  He’d probably been there since o-dark thirty pounding out cast after cast into the south easterly wind in hopes of connecting with Mr. Blackmouth or Miss Coho.  Bummer that none were around to play today. 

Today I was also able to test out a newly acquired 6′ Bucks Bag Alpine pontoon boat.  I figured that there might be a good use for it one day, and today was the day to give it whirl. Its was ok, just don’t expect me to jump on the pontoon band wagon, what I found interesting was how slowly you actually row compared to a pram. 

My efforts however weren’t un-noticed as I picked up some nice bullheads for the barbeque, just kiddin…  Although they were willing, it wasn’t the type of quarry that I was interested in seeing at the end of the line.  I fished the 10′ 6 wt. GLX Native run with Nautilus FW3+ on Rio outbound short intermediate line with a light pink clouser.

Things should be heating up soon, just when??? We’ll have to see on the next outing… stay tuned!

2010 Salmon Opening Day: 7/2/2010

This is my second year owning the salt water boat and I can say that it was one of the best purchases that I’ve made.  Dad and I had a blast fishing Elliott bay last year on opening day along with the trips out to fish for Pink salmon in Neah Bay and in the south sound.  I wasn’t expecting to find great fishing but the reports have been good regarding the record returns of King salmon to the Columbia and also through the Straits, so we had to make it an inuagural outing.  I’d set my alarm for 03:15 and wanted to be on the road by 03:30.  The boat launch at Armeni can be packed if you don’t get there in time and those minutes can be crucial to the King salmon bite.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a zoo and no wait to launch the boat.  We motored out to my favorite crabbing spot, and proceed to rig up, bait and drop pots to let them soak for a few hours.  After that was all set up, we motored back towards the bay and rigged up the downrigger roads with flashers and Coho killers.

One was with a Purple Haze UV flasher with corresponding Coho Killer, the other was Chartruese with glow splatter back green Coho Killer.  Since I’m  a newbie to this type of fishing, I prefer to use gear versus bait (cut plug herring)  I know there are probably advantages to the bait, but its messy and you have to tend to it quite often.  The Coho killers worked well last season and was responsible for some nice Kings to hand, so they were promptly tied up on 42-44″ inches of 20 lb Maxima leader and down they went.

First one was at 50 feet, the other at 100.  We trolled for about an hour with no luck and then the Purple Haze rod at 50 feet bounced, I set, played the fish momentarily and it came unbuttoned.  DARN!  As it was getting lighter out, I noticed the bait was concentrating at 60-75 feet, so proceeded to lower the Purple Haze rig down to 75 on the Penn and kept the troll speed between 2.7-2.9 mph.  Essential to give the lure the proper wiggle.

Next pulse and fish was on, I was not losing this one!  Netted, bled and put into the fish box.  A nice male of 9 lbs measuring 26 inches.  The minimum size for juvenille Kings (Blackmouth) is 22″, so we felt fortunate to have brought at least one to hand.  We had a couple of other hits and played those fish briefly before they came unbuttoned, and then as we were making a pass on the East Channel of the Duwamish, the Splatter back went bonkers, I picked up the rod, unclipped it and handed it to dad.  He was all grins, enjoying the fight of a King, his very first played out from beginning to net. 

Another nice male,  of 8 lbs, but a little smaller, measuring 24″ on the dot.  He was promptly given the ‘wood shampoo’ and put into the bleed box.   We checked our crab pots, but no legals and just a bunch of starfish.  It was a bummer however because I think someone lifted one of my pots, oh well…  If Im in the mood for crab, I’ll probably just go buy it in the store.  All in all, a wonderful day to share with my dad and bonus that we got into the first salmon for 2010.