After a lot of planning, since Kim winning a charter bottom fishing trip at the Sportsman Show in January, which we upgraded to a combo, we arrived on July 10 to sign in and then drove on to Hobuck for the night. The cabin was nice but not the sofa bed which I took to sleep on.

We signed aboard at 4:45am on the 11th and headed out west an hour. Before we got to the where we would fish my brother could see whale spouts in the distance against the fog bank. When we stopped and started fishing there weren’t any bites in the several drifts we made but there was bait all over. Then the whales got up close. So close I saw the hair (baleen) inside their mouths. Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of it. I found on a charter it hard to take time to get pictures. I did get some video of the whales but only a fraction of what we saw.

We finally left the area of whales and started fishing again. We were getting bites like crazy. Everyone. Then we started bringing in the fish! Dogfish! We moved. Started fishing again and my brother Richard hooked a total of 3 fish and got 1 salmon in. He got the first salmon in and the boat gave him a tshirt that said he got the first fish. Then the guy next to me hooked a salmon and got it in. Then nothing. So we move and find dogfish again. We stopped fishing for salmon around 9:30 or 10 and motored an hour to the bottom fishing area.

The captain said this was a rockfish area and that if we wait just a bit after feeling fish on we might get 2 rockfish at once. Therefore, when I had a hard time reeling in I thought it was 2 rockfish and the deck hand came over to heft them aboard by the line when he saw it was a ling. I didn’t see it at first because I was leaning back against the cabin and using the railing as support to reel. I looked over and see the biggest ling I have ever seen. It was huge! Deckhand runs to get the net then the nose of the ling breaks water and it turns and heads back down as I watch breaking off the jig. Bye biggest ling I have ever seen. Deckhand comes back too late. We catch more bottom fish and at 3:30 the weather starts to get nasty. At 4 we turn back to port which took an hour.

I filmed as we went around Cape Flattery. My thoughts filled with whales and giant lings. Lol and how my feet, arms, hands, back, and neck hurt.

See the video at
https://youtu.be/zt5uXgCFizg


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