Around my house the Marine Area 7 opener has been on the calendar since the date was announced. With the boat, gear and fresh herring strips ready we were counting hours. Unfortunately, Karen had a last-minute meeting she had to support and she would not be joining me. I considered going solo but then decided to extend a last-minute invite to our friend Jeff. He thought about it for about 2 seconds and said sure, I’m in and what time? I said met me at 1:30 am and we can ride together. Jeff was right on time and we headed off to Cornet Bay for our early am launch.

On arrival; although the launch area was calm I could tell it was blowing pretty good on the outside. Previously Mike Carey and I had talked and he planned to follow me in his boat to Eagle Point and then my boat would go on from there. That turned out to be a good decision, once through the pass we discovered that the water was nastier than nasty and with the cloud cover it was pitch black out there. Leaving the pass in 6-8 foot seas we slugged it out until we were past Iceberg Point before the wind finally laid down. From that point on it was smooth sailing and we got Mike to Eagle Point safe and sound. After a few suggestions we said good bye and headed for Open Bay.

A half hour later we pulled the throttle back and prepared for battle. Jeff and I had never fished together so I kind of ran him through my routine and we got to fishing. We started out targeting suspended meter marks between 30 and 60’ while running in 120’ of water. Almost immediately one of the riggers pops and we are into a nice fish. Jeff being the guest fisherman was up to bat. The fish put up quite a battle with many long runs and even went airborne at one point. Jeff was always one step ahead and eventually we slid the net under a beautiful San Juan summer chinook. We did a fin count and had to release Jeff’s first wild chinook but Jeff was one excited young man.

A short while later we have a second take down that turned out to be a double, the first fish was on the move. Again, I told Jeff that he was the guest fisherman and he was up until we bonked one. Surprised, Jeff got to it and after another lengthy battle I slid the net under his fish. This time the fish was clipped so we bled it and put it on ice. Jeff was beaming and did a great job with the fish. I tried to put the screws to the other fish so I could help with Jeff’s fish and ended up popping it off. Gear back down we went back to work.

After the first couple fish our meter marks more or less disappeared and we had to hunt for them. When we did find a meter mark, we pretty much were able to get a bite, just finding the meter marks was a challenge. We probably had 4 or 5 more solid hookups and quite a number of drive-bys but weren’t able to put any more fish in the boat. More fish for the box or not we had solid action most of the morning.

We were running 11” Gibbs flashers and either a trolling fly or various Kingfisher Light spoons. Both the flies and spoons were tied on 42” of 30# fluorocarbon. All our fish were hooked at 40-60’ in various depths of water. Our trolling speed was 2.4-3.0 mph. The hot rig of the day was an 11” Gibbs Chili Pepper flasher and a 3.5” cookies and cream spoon.

Jeff and I had a blast and, on the way back in we got to watch 2 separate groups of whales. One was three humpbacks heading off into Canada and then a pod of 5-7 orcas. The orcas may have been feeding on the school of salmon shown in the picture of my fish-finder.