First trip of the year, and it was worth the red eye drive to meet up with my brother in Olympia. Sorry for the late report, but I was trying to wait for the pictures from my dads camera but he's tied up at work and hasn't figured out how to send them to me yet.

We got there an hour after sunrise and there were fishermen already out on the jetty. We expected awful weather, but surprisingly the sun came out and everything! The jetty has been torn up, much have been a lot of winter storm wear because it was hard to walk on after about the first 1/4 mile, and I hardly recogonized our spot. The low tide was pretty lame that day, so we didn't end up with much bait, about two dozen sand shrimp, which is not much at all.

My first cast I pulled in a big greenling, second the same, and it went like that until the ebb. As the tide went out the harbor turned into a river, and nothing could get the weight to stick to the bottom. Every bite would turn into a snag. It picked up when the current subsided. We caught some monster striped perch, which my wife loves, they are awwesome fighters too. Biggest was about 19 inches, but they were all about the same size, they were schooling up right in front of us.

One of us would fish for appropriately sized bait and the other would fish for lings, but the ling action was slower than we're used to. But I've found that when the bait are biting, the lings are lock jawed, when the lings are on the prowl the bait run and hide.

We ended up catching a mixed bag of perch and greenling and rockfish, but we didn't keep anything under 3 pounds, so we ended up with a nice bunch of meat.

We fished hooks and rocks with sand worms, clam necks and sand shrimp. Sand shrimp were by far the best producers for the bait, greenling for the lings.

I had one ling take my bait and I gave him a bit of slack and he took me under a rock and wouldn't come out. I waited and could feel him on the line for about 20 minutes, but he ate the bait around the hook and spit it back at me. My brother had one take, but it didn't stick either. Unusual we usually always bag at least one, but I can't complain. The fish fought well and the weather was awesome.

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