I had the chance to meet a great set of brothers that came down for a day of bottom fishing. These guys have been through it all together and it shows. They remind me of what I enjoy most about being a guide. I get to go fishing with great people and be part of their amazing story for a day. They will remember this trip for a while, and so will I.
Earlier in the year the main location is the sunken tip of the south Jetty. This gets fished out fairly quickly once people start making pit stops after salmon fishing. It also eats tackle faster than a teenager can down anything from Taco Bell. With a calm ocean, we made the 32 mile run down to the Tillamook Head lighthouse. This is one of the coolest places to fish I’ve ever been to. If you like the look of spooky abandoned places, this is a great spot. I just wish we would have good weather in October. A Halloween trip to an abandoned lighthouse to catch bright Copper and black Rockfish would just be perfect!
We checked out a few spots and picked up a few small black rockfish. We also released a nice sized quillback since we aren’t allowed to keep them. Then we landed on an awesome drift and a school of Copper Rockfish. These guys swarmed our gear like zombies at the apocalypse. At one point we had all four rods bent over, with one rod having 2 fish on it! After limiting everyone on rockfish, we did a few drifts specifically for lingcod. Unfortunately we were only finding the little lings and they had to go back.
For tackle we started out using a free weight setup with double shrimp flies. As we got closer to limits of bottom fish, we swapped out the bottom shrimp fly for a plastic grub. The lingcod go wild over these. I pre-tied lots of leaders on 40 lb monofilament. When you’re on a good drift you don’t want to spend time tying gear. We went through a few but everyone generally did pretty well at keeping from getting snagged. When we did, I was generally able to maneuver the boat to get free.
The trip back was smooth with our usual afternoon wind holding off. We took a slight detour to watch a pod of whales feeding near the surf by the Peter Iredale Shipwreck. After that, it was back around the south Jetty. The estuary was teeming with Pelicans and other birds diving on bait balls. The harbor porpoises gave us a bit of a show as well. The sky looked like something from the closing credits of a movie after a happy ending. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day to kick off last weekend!
I really hope to see these clients again. They were awesome and I’d love to have them back year after year.
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