2018 Ocean Salmon Season – Week 1

June 23rd, Ocean Salmon Opener.  I have been waiting for this day since the end of Buoy 10 last year.

I have a slip in Ilwaco, but not using it just yet because I have river plans for the 4th of July.  I will be trailering for a couple weeks.

We got an early start.  Hit the road at 6am to launch by 8am and cross the bar at low tide.  Got our beer, bait and ice.  We even plan to do some crabbing to see if any stragglers are still hanging out.  Heading out, there is a slight breeze.  The swells were not terrible.  That is, till we pass buoy 10.  The confused seas were evident.  This is what my boat was made for.  We pushed on.  Once we got a little north and in about 50 FOW, we start dropping pots.  We put out 9 pots with hopes of a big bounty.

The water looked fishy, so it was time to put the lines in the water.  It did not take long and Fred was on the board with a nice Chinook.  We stuck it out there for a couple of hours with no success.  It was time to push North to the Condo’s.  The wind chop was not terrible, but not great either.  It took us a little wile to get to where we wanted to be.  We found a few charter boats doing their circles, so we fell in line.  Not long again, we are starting to get bites.  Over the next couple of hours, we land two more Chinook and released a few small Chinook.  With the doom and gloom fishing reports, this was not a bad ocean opener.  We did not see any Coho.

Time to pull pots and head in.  Sad to say, most of the pots were small females.  We did manage to get 6 nice sized keepers.  All my crew went home with something that day.  I did not.  🙁

Till next week…….