Weekend On The Coast

Getting out to the coast for fishing doesn’t happen quite as often as one would like it, but when the opportunity arises, boy is it sweet. July can be a particularly tricky time of year to get out to Prince Rupert due to chinook often being at zero retention for the majority of the month; when a person is only making a couple trips to the ocean, you do want the opportunity to fill the freezer as much as possible, so we generally try to delay a trip until you can keep one or two.

Said chance presented itself at the end of July this year, when chinook opened back up and the first coho of the season were starting to make an appearance. The forecast, although a little hairy at first, took a turn for the better to make for a couple hard-to-beat days out on the water. Our game plan never really varies: Try to get out at first light (both to make the most of the first tide change and avoid the busiest time at the boat launch), throw a couple lines down around 30 and 50 feet and try to bang out a limit of salmon.

 

The first morning, we filled our limit with coho and pink salmon. Quite a few people I know turn their nose up at the thought of keeping pinks from the ocean, but they make excellent fresh eating, and I always enjoy canning several up to enjoy during the winter months. Second day out had a little more action and excitement, as we tied into more chinook and coho than pinks. It has been quite a few years since I’ve been on a late enough trip in the season to actually catch coho, and while they are a different battle than chinook, they sure are a blast to fight. While I am a firm believer that anchovies work best for bait, a dwindling supply led me to using a hoochie with great success.

Afternoons were dedicated to halibut fishing, which, if we put in an ounce of the effort halibut fishing as we do for salmon, we would be incredibly successful. However, that’s never quite the case, and a combination of encroaching sea fog, impatience and trying out new spots left us empty handed.

 

Not to be disappointed by this, we gladly came home with a cooler full of salmon to freeze, can and candy; with one pink seasoned with only salt, pepper and butter and thrown on the barbecue while we packaged up the rest of the fish and cleaned up from the trip. Another season of ocean fishing is in the books, and I already am looking forward to the next!