Well, yesterday we didn't do so well, only caught 111 for four possible limits. My Turkish friend did finally catch his first fish out here, he landed two really nice Copper Rocks but, of course, had to let them go. He was quite disappointed at that. No pics.
Today, my son just wanted to go out with the two of us. A beautiful day on the water, almost no wind, but that damnable current was sure strong. We dropped when the local tide chart said low tide (tide was still flowing out) and we pulled when the local current chart said slack current (it was already coming in strong). Thanks WDFW for "giving" us such optimal current days to shrimp....
Anyways, while we soaked the pots, we headed in to a ling spot. I brought some salmon bellies along and put a half of one on my jig. First drop down and BAM! fish on. I knew it was a keeper and had my son ready to hand me the net, I need to get him on some rockfish for practice.
Anyways, landed the fish and blugh, out comes a bunch of goo. Well, it turns out that it is three hunks of octopus including an arm piece that had suckers over two inches across. The goo weighed almost three pounds and the fish, without its stomach contents, was a little over twelve pounds and 32 1/2 inches long.
We caught one Quillback rockfish about 18 inches long and tossed it. I asked my son if he was ready to reel in the next fish and he said no because it looked like I forgot to bring a can of coke to bribe/reward him with. It turns out that I had one in the cooler, just in case this ocasion arose.
Pretty soon, BAM! another big ling on, it fought better than the first one and my son was a bit leary of taking the rod, though he did. Well, he slowly pumped and reeled o perfection and we soon landed the 23 inch ling that was hooked... in the middle of its side.
I thought we had another really nice one for him.
Then, we went out to pull our pots and talked a nice older gentleman, whom we had spoken to earlier, into having his grandaughter use their puller to pull our pots (haven't got mine back from Ace yet). He and his granddaughter had just pulled their second pot for their limits so I had high expectations for us. We pulled three limits and tossed back a limit of the smaller ones. We ended up a few ounces shy of eight pounds for 160 tails.
Enjoy the photos, the large suction cup is 2 1/4 inch by 2 inches. I wonder how big an octopus has to be to grow those.
