Halibut season 2006

[Mason C. Bailey]

We arrived at Neah Bay on 5/6, launched and moored the boat at Big Salmon at about 3 PM. It was wet and nasty, so we decided to just go back to our room at Sekui and relax until the next morning. On both Sunday and Monday the weather was still bad, we made it outside to the ocean but turned around both times and ended up fishing inside of Tatoosh Island, along the shore. Fishing was not bad and we caught our lings and misc. cod fish.

On Tuesday, the opener, the weather greatly improved and we went out to Swithsure and caught our halibut (2), several nice lings and 5 really nice True Cod. We then went back to the rock pile outside of Tatoosh and caught the rest of our lings and other assorted cod. Wednesday was not too bad weather wise and we fished the rock pile again and off of Slant rocks. Picked up some nice lings and lost many more. The fishing story of the day was when I left my rod in the rod holder and went inside to put some Johnny Cash in the CD player. Right as I was about to load the CD I heard a snap and turned around and saw my pole about to go overboard. The "Fish On" rod holder had snapped down to the level position from the force of the fish. When the reel apparently hit the gunnel of the boat, it made the line free spool and created a birds nest out of the line. I placed the rod back in another rod holder and started hand lining in the fish. This took some time but when the fish reached close to the surface, we could see a giant Ling cod. As my fishing partner went to net the fish, there was suddenly two fish. The slightly less then legal 23 inch ling that was attached to my line and a really big ling that had just spit out the smaller one. The big one got away, since we weren't fast enough with the net and the smaller one we let go.

Thursday, the weather was not bad but we decided to try for larger halibut off of Tatoosh rather then going out to Swithsure or Umatila reef. By about 10 AM we hadn't caught our halibut so we decided to go out to Swithsure. We beat our way out towards Swithsure for about an hour then decided to return towards shore because the weather was once again not in our favor. We ended up with some nice fish but no halibut for the day.

Friday we again fished the rock pile but it was difficult to keep your bait on the bottom, too much wind. Caught a few fish but it was our slowest day of fishing. We then returned to Big Salmon and cleaned our fish. My partner then drove our tow vehicle back to Sekui and I motored the boat back to Sekui as well.

We saw at least 3 other C-Dory's on the trip and I was able to get pictures of two of them. I'll post them in photos when I get a chance. Although any fishing trip is better then working, the price per pound of fish this year is approximately $21. Last year it was at $10 per pound!

McNaughty III