Garibaldi, Saturday Jun 11

Was at work Friday afternoon, when I got a text from Todd, want to fish Saturday was the question. In looking at the forecasts earlier in the week, I had ruled out any ocean fishing. I checked the forecast again, and texted him back, sure let’s go! We went down Friday night, and stayed in my travel trailer. We were on the way to Three Arches by 5:00 a.m.

The black sea bass bite was great, best I have seen in a long time. We got all of our bass, and 3 lings, had to work for the fourth ling, but we got it. Some of the lings had whole herring, green label size, in their mouths when caught. To match the hatch, we switched to five ounce flutter jigs. It was only about 10:00 a.m. and we headed back to Garibaldi. Let’s stop and troll for salmon, Todd said. He keeps two back up rods in the boat. We managed to find a very old can of tuna, opened it without the aid of a can opener, and mixed in some bloody tuna. We then deployed 3.0 Spinfish in about 140’ of water, a few miles south of the Tillamook Bar. Hey, Todd shouted, you just had a takedown, really? I said. A few minutes later Todd caught and released a native coho. Then my rod went off, a beautiful 11 pound chinook, weighed on a scale. I forgot how well they fight. Now to get Todd a chinook, after releasing four more coho, Todd got a chinook.

I was about 1:00 p.m. at this point, so we called it a day, and made the trip back to Portland. Now, to plan for next weekend, which is the opening of the selective coho season. I hope the weather cooperates.