Veteran’s day always brings some sort of outdoor adventure, thank you for your sacrifices veterans! Usually it is duck hunting but this year things lined up to make a fishing trip happen. Cameron wanted to go for his birthday and conditions aligned so who was going to argue with that?
One member of the crew had an alarm that didn’t go off so we got a little bit later of a start. You never know what’s really going to be the deal out there this late in the year. But we did see a steelhead jump in the channel so we put a steelhead heavy spread in as soon as we got past the inner piers and treble hook restricted area. That has always been consistent for us in the fall. Flat lines with thin fins, bandits, mag lips, and short coppers with spoons. Today it wasn’t so consistent and as soon as we cleared the pierheads we saw another steelhead jump…right behind the spread and not on any of our lines.
We kept pushing west to deeper water, hoping to get something going. It took way longer than we expected but we finally popped a juvenile king on a rigger. This was on a half moon series Craig’s Flounder and that spoon probably took half of our bites the rest of the day. It was on a rigger that we kept very close to the bottom. A little more lull and then we popped a double in 70 feet. 50 copper (king) and flat lined rapala (steelhead). Shockingly we would only get more more bite on a rod with a planer board the rest of the day. This was despite having 9 board rods out.
We did get a solid program going with the riggers and divers in 80 to 100 feet. Spotted Magic man, NBK, Craigs’s Flounder, and A bomb were getting bit. We did catch a couple lake trout but it was mostly juvenile king action with some perfect eaters. It was all deep, we didn’t have any of the deep coppers on the boat but the wire divers were set at 120-150 and the riggers were right off bottom. The weather turned eventually and we had to call it before we boxed out, ending 17-20 and having a lot of fun.
One thing that was interesting to note is these fish were all eating bloaters. If you aren’t familiar with a bloater, check this out Bait Profile - Bloater. Many of the fish I cleaned had young of year bloaters in their stomachs and one king even had a goby. This isn’t abnormal from what I’ve seen in the fall out there. Everything the Humminbird was marking was way down deep and that was the predator prey relationship we were capitalizing on. It was interesting to see some other reports where the high lines were just fire, they were from other ports but still. Ours were so dead on this adventure which was surprising in the cold mixed water. All I can think of is that is was a forage thing that differed between the 2 areas.
I’m sure we have some more action coming out there but at some point this juvenile kings are going to disappear. While I’d prefer a much colder fall we’ll take what mother nature gives us and if that means more big lake trips over duck hunts we can work with that.