This is actually a combined report for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was just my father and I and Sunday his longtime fishing buddy joined us. Both days we launched out of Ocean Shore Marina early morning 5:30am to make it across the bar before full ebb. Crossing the bar Saturday wasn't bad and once past the 3 mile or so mark the water smoothed out and we headed NW for about 15 miles. Once we hit the 170' depth line I checked the fish finder and spotted activity at 45' to 100' down. What luck! The fishing was past a furious and we needed to bring 8 fish to the boat before we saw a hatchery fish. We quickly determined that the army truck stingking my father was using was the preferred lure that day. I lost track of how many we brought to the boat and we didn't bring any fish under 7lbs on board that day. Done with limits by 9:30 we headed back and finished processing our fish at the dock. The stomachs of the fish were loaded with krill and two had 8" mackerel in there as well.

Sunday was a different story. The wind had picked up overnight and made for a very ruff bar crossing and pretty tough fishing conditions. The fish seemed scattered and the jellyfish were everywhere. The pace of hooking fish was significantly slower and the lure of choice for us was a silver and blue coho killer. The upside of Sunday was that the fish we caught seemed to be a bit bigger in the 11 to 12lbs each. Again the ratio of hatchery to wild was pretty small and we called it a day at 1:30pm with but 4 fish in the boat. Both days 45' down on the rigger worked best and a few fish were hooked after the gear was brought up and on occasion before it was lowered. We hooked and brought to the boat one chinook but it was only about 20" long and subsequently released.

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