Fishin' With My Daughter

Yesterday I got off work, and took my daughter fishing in Puget Sound.
We saw many great things and wonders... Navy ships heading into the sound getting ready for SeaFair this weekend. The Victoria Clippers flying ships heading up to Canada. These are amazing Hydro foil boats built by Boeing in the 70's and 80's. I remember seeing them when I hired in back in 1978... They were all stainless steel and HUGE! Nice to see them still in service. Three hours by water in good weather!
other sites we saw, a porpoise or Dolphin, Hershel the salmon eating sea lion, or maybe his brothers and sisters... When I see "Hershels" in the water, unlike most people, I don't get offended, I get excited because it usually means there are salmon where we are at. Salmon is the reason for the season, the fishing season that is!
Last season would have been a total bust if not for the extremely large, record breaking run of Pink salmon.
Anyway, I digress... We launched from Alki in West Seattle at about 6 30 am. I know, you want to be on the water at day break, but I don't get off work early enough. Anyway, we headed to a new fishing spot, New to us that is, called West Point. It is about five mile or so boat ride North of our launch point. Never having been there, I needed a landmark, I was told there is a light house there. I was looking for something much taller, funny how I envision something totally different than reality!
We put tow crab pots down in about 90 feet of water. And then prepared ourselves to fish, now I got to be honest here, I wasn't expecting much as far as Salmon fishing is concerned. My friend Dan The Fisherman has been out fishing at Redondo 7 times already and has No, Zip, Nada, the big Zero for fish, and if he ain't catchin' em, there ain't many fish to be had. Also, all my gear was still set up from the previous season, I know, I was rather lazy about it. Maybe had something to so with the disgust I had for the lack of Salmon from last year... I just left everything in the boat as Katie and I prepared to catch all those Pinks in the river, so, yeah, I just wanted to enjoy being out in the boat with my daughter.
We had a wonderful time, caught a large dogfish right away, and later we hooked into a small, about 18 inch Blackmouth Salmon. Had another hit and hook up, but that one slipped the hook near the surface. At about 9:20 I noticed a bump bump on one of the rods in the down rigger, I got up, grabbed the rod from the down rigger holder and waited for another bump, there it came, I jerked back hard, FISH ON! OH boy, this fish was peeling line. Running for daylight, or perhaps deeper water as the case really was. I started barking orders, chaos ensues on my boat when someone really hooks into one. Since I hooked him at 130 feet down, and he started ripping line, I was afraid he might not stop peeling line from the reel, but eventually I got him to stop for a minute or two so I could try to retrieve some valuable fishing line!
Meanwhile Katie was doing her best to bring up the other down rigger and fishing rod. I'm steering the boat, and alternately reeling and holding as the fish does it's dance beneath the deep cold waters...Oh what a wonderful feeling, the thrill of the fight, that big fish hunkered down, your fishing rod bent at an extreme angle.
Eventually you see it surface, they always look bigger than they are, it crests about thirty feet from the boat, marvelous, a thing of beauty, Purple and silver, it makes another dive down, down, trying to escape.. I reel him in. by now Katie has the net, the salmon is tired, laying on it's side, Katie lunges, he is in the net, she folds the net over on itself, enclosing the fish, he is ours!
A Marvelous Buck of about 15 pounds.
We fish for another half hour or so, drive to our two crab pots, they are loaded with crab! Out of about 30 crab, we are able to keep 7 males of large enough size.
All in all, it was a fantastic day on Puget Sound!



Fillet O Fish!