Pacific City lings/rockfish 5/16

Good Luck PP, I'm shooting for early Sun - unless the weather or surf does something funny

Jay will you be around Sunday afternoon/Monday morning? I'll be heading to Lincoln City Sunday mid morning, could swing a PC afternoon or Monday AM if you are interested.

The way the weather looks today and the forecast for tomorrow morning, I hope to be on the water at PC early tomorrow morning. In my head that means by 7 or so. My butt, on the other hand, usually makes me a bit late. 

I'm keeping an eye out for a report from Pelagic Paddler. He was planning on getting out early this AM before the bikes invaded. They were all over the back roads by my house heading for the coast when I came in to work. At least I have the PC cam to watch today while I'm at work. 

3pm Saturday...it looks like the cyclists have arrived

steelheadr - I'll be watching the web cam looking for you tomorrow, and try some cleanup duty Monday / Tuesday if you left anything.  Good luck and have fun -

Alan

I'll be happy to NOT get seasick and actually catch something this time 

Just remember that the ocean swell is your friend............  Tomorrow should be kind to you -

Alan

Thanks and let's hope so. Maybe an offering to the sea is in order...

Thanks and let's hope so. Maybe an offering to the sea is in order...

Yup, I'm sure that offering it your breakfast will suffice. 

Thanks and let's hope so. Maybe an offering to the sea is in order...

Yup, I'm sure that offering it your breakfast will suffice. 

Anything that the lings in particular like. I might as well feed them their favorites.

Unless the wind dies down I'm canceling my monday / tueday trip.  Might try for this coming weekend, but will just have to wait and see.  Hope you guys did well -

Alan

Sunday, 5/17

I got out to Pacific City by 8am, a near record for me, and the water looked like this.



There were only a small # of surfers around and they were all in the parking lot drinking their coffee. However, the dories were out in force. After reaching Haystack, I took a couple of pics.





I found a nice little groove on the leeward side of the rock, right along a kelp seam, and started hitting fish nearly every cast. I landed lots of underlings, 2 keepers (barely) and 3 chunky blacks. The last ling I boated got a bit frisky in the yak and, in the commotion, my rod went for a swim while in freespool.    Luckily it was floating about 1 foot below the surface so I went for a quick swim and retrieved it. I got a bit of water inside and decided I had enough fish.

I packed up and headed over to visit with 2 other yakkers fishing the north side of the rock. One was a local, Dennis, that has fished and dived the area for a while. His friend, Jefferson, was borrowing some gear. Neither had heard of this site before.

The wind began to pick up about 10:30 and by 11:30 the clouds rolled in and dropped to the water level. At least the morning was calm, no chumming or nausea.

Wow! What a day to be out on Big Blue! I wish I lived closer when the water is calm like that.
-Scott

Good Job Jay!

Glad to hear you got some fish (and your rod back)!

I hit the beach in PC at 6 am on Sat.  Flat and clam. lots of dory traffic.  It seemed it was just going to be one of those days .  Right off the bat received a little flack from a hung over dory guy trying to be funny. Then the depth finder wouldn't power up, so I fiddled with some connections and got it working.  Launched and was getting everything ready to start fishing and the depth finder quit again.  Wasted 20 min trying to get it working, I really wanted it to work as it and the gps feature (cuda250) is the key to getting your lings (finding those humps and drop offs is a guessing game without it).  Weather and seas improved more as the day progressed.  The Blacks were committing suicide  and I had my seven in about an hour.  Then I switched to lings and cycled through probably 15+ shorts, lost a couple heavy feeling fish on the way up but the closest I could come was 21". Gave the depth finder another good 20min  of serious cutting and twisting of potentially loose wires etc, but no dice so I headed for the truck.

Sunday I slept in and launched in Oceanside around 9am to slightly larger surf and more wind than Sat.  About halfway out near the second  large rock (of three arch rocks) I ran into a school of blacks on the surface and caught the fastest limit I think ever. Cast, hook up, land, whack em on the head, lay em in the foot well and cast again. I had five fish under my legs (so they wouldn't flop back in) before I decide to throw them in the fish bag before I lost any.  Cleaned the deck up and in a few more casts I was done.  Thought about paddling the rest of the way and prospecting for lings but decided to head in and go for a hike with the wife.

 
Way to go fellas! Nice pics!