Memorial Day Weekend Halibut

Not much better for me. I got out to Salt creek on friday about 11:00 am and got the last camp site, set up camp and went out fishing. Broke through the waves on the way out just fine and paddled out to the end of tongue point. The fish where biting, in 20 minutes I had hooked up 2 shaker lings and a nice  size copper. Lots of other hits, perch I am thinking. Stayed out about an hour and decide to go back in and meet the wife and kids. Coming back in was a little diffrent. Fishing-T  lets say I got the landing down, when I get into 5' of water I jump out of the yak, tip it over and throw my gear to the wind saving Neptune the trouble. What really happened is I paddled and paddled and got tail ended by a wave geting side ways dumping me over. I should know something was up with all the surfers out there.
Got all my gear back though.
Sat was not much fun. The wind blew so hard I couldn't get vertical. Even though I was in no more then 30' of water. I would paddle to the begin of my drift and drop and jig and I was on the rocks again. So I called it a day and went back in. Sunday was blown out and we packed up and went home. I would like to go and try that spot again with stable winds.
The halibut derby winning fish was 78# , 77# and thrd was 60ish. I heard a few boats left because of the winds. Last week someone caught a 160# off of garbage dump. nice fish.
I had fun but because I was alone I decided to not push it too much and stay safe. Hope everyone else had fun too.
Matt

It was definitely nice to get out and fish with you guys (even if the fishing wasn't good). I made up for it yesterday by catching some nice sea-run cutts...

Whoa, I'm finally recovered from the trip. 

It was a 10 hour drive for John and me, AFTER working most of Friday. I hadn't gotten all that much sleep in the days before, so when Allen rapped on my window, it took me a llooonngg time to wake up. Good thing we were bottom-fishing, and not salmon-fishing.

I had a great time, even though we didn't catch any halibut. The ling and the cab were fun, and I'm really impressed with octopus- there's hardly any waste on one. Pounding it, before cooking, really helps to tenderize it.

Sunday. John and I packed up and headed to Dungeness Spit. We got there shortly after 12:00pm and were shortly on the water. We had to buck a slight flood tide, initially, but were to the end of the Spit in an hour. (About a 4 mile paddle.) It was sunny and flat calm, with a very easy flood tide that would push us from the shallows at the end of the spit, off to the deeps- ~300+. We made several drifts, (sans chute) with only a dogfish shark to show. (Released.) It was so calm, we could hear someone over at the Dungeness Bar (2 miles away!), yell "Fish On"! It took me about 2 minutes to convince myself that we should go over and investigate. John wasn't much harder to convince! We fished for another hour and half, with no luck. It was a long haul back to the launch, and not only were we bucking the tide, but the wind perked up and made it even longer.

We were back on the road @ 7:00pm and I was home @ 1:30am.