2025 might be a tough season for Fogarty

Heads-up for those who launch from Fogarty: the deep cove is now filled in with sand. It's now much more of a surf launch than before, even at low tide. The deepest water I marked while launching this morning was only 12 feet. Even though the overall swell was very small today, every once in a while, a larger set of 4 footers would roll through. That was plenty large enough to make things dicey on the beach, especially when landing. I ended up taking out at Depoe, just to be safe.

As for the fishing: north current was ripping at a good clip, 1.5-2mph. Clear water, low 50 degree range. I trolled for salmon NW out to about 160 ft for no bites. Dropped a herring down and did some drifts for a couple hours, only to catch a few blacks and a copper rockfish. Moved onto the main reef, and the current made it tough to fish effectively. But the black rockfish were on the chomp, and they were real nice ones: as many 18-20" blacks as you wanted to tangle with. I moved onto a shallower pinnacle to try to get out of the current, and the big blacks were eating everything there too. I even had one of them grab a mangled herring dangling a few feet below the surface while I was unhooking another giant black.

Trolled south towards Depoe along a foam line, and picked up an undersized Chinook (about 20" or so) and a nice fin-clipped coho in the mid-20" range. Totally would've bonked that coho if it were in season. Picked up even more giant blacks while trolling over the Government Point reef.

Might be doing more Depoe launches this summer until the sand is washed out of Fogarty. I only took pictures of the beach. Y'all know what black rockfish look like.

We were there in April and it looked like it was breaking right across the front.  Wasn't even a huge surf day. 

Photo is from August, 2021, for perspective. All the kelp beds that were on the south side of the cove are now buried in sand.