Great day out of Ilwaco

[Blsum]

So my buddy Jeff and I have been trying to work it out so I can get on his boat for a fishing trip. He loves tuna and salmon fishing out in the ocean. For what ever reason we where never able to make it happen. He either had to work or I had other things going on. We planned on going out on Sunday the 22nd. Well I get a call on Friday that the boat is overheating  and that he was going to work on it and we will see what happens. So Saturday I'm sitting on pins and needles all day waiting for the call. About 3 o'clock he calls and say's it's all fixed and we are a go.  :clap: and to meet him at the boat launch in Chinook at 4:30 in the morning. The wife and I had a wedding reception to go to on Saturday night so I wasn't able to leave until late. I planned on driving down Saturday and sleeping in the car. I ended up leaving Shelton around 9:45 that night. A couple of stops later and I was on my way. I ended up getting there at 12:30 in the morning. Set the car up and tried to get some sleep. Let me tell you trying to sleep in the back of the wife's Prius is not very comfy.  It took for ever to finally fall asleep. I think I only ended up getting like 2 hours of sleep. We meet at 4:30 and the race was on. One of Jeff's buddies met us down there with his boat. Since you never know whats going to happen out there its always good to have a buddy. Especially that far out. We ran the 40 or 50 miles out to the tuna grounds. Started by looking for jumpers. We thought we saw some and hustled to get the rods in the water. Trolled for a little bit and realized that what we saw was a pod of porpoises. Pulled the gear and ran some more. Finally we found some jumpers and got on the fish. Got the rods in and it was no time before we got our first hook up. I no more than grab that rod and another one gets hooked up. Double header right out the gate.  Man those things can fight. We trolled some more and hooked into another. We no more then landed that one and had another on the line. This one is a big one and schooling me. We get it right up to the boat and Jeff goes to gaff it. Well he ends up hooking the gaff in the lip. Rips the lip out an unhooks the fish.  oh well live and learn. Start fishing again and we have another one hook up. I grab the rod  and the fish takes off and SNAP. Busted the 150lbs pro grade line.  While we are trolling we spot something in the water just in front of the boat. It was a huge sea turtle. Must of been 6 feet long and 4 feet wide with a huge head. One of the coolest things I've seen. After that the fishing slowed down. We ended up trolling for a while only catching  2 more fish. Then it just seamed to die off for us. We trolled for a few hours with nothing. Finally we decided to head back in and get our limits of salmon. On our way back in we thought we saw jumpers so we went to investigate. It ended up being a large pod of porpoises. There must of been at least a thousand of them.  We hit the 400' depth and got ready to start trolling. We had one rod set up but not fishing yet. Just the flasher and the hoochie hanging in the water. Jeff is sending down the first rod when a nice coho slams the hoochie. Luckily we grabbed the rod before it went over board. Then it was game on. We had our first 4 fish in the boat in about 20 min. All nice fish. We ended up tossing a small one back and kept fishing. The last two fish seemed to take forever. But we nailed em. So all in all we ended up with 5 tuna and 6 coho. We ended up talking with Jeff's buddy who went out there with us. Their boat must of been doing something different cause they ended up with 27 tuna between the two guys on the boat. Man what a day. I had a blast. I'm a little bit sore today but not to bad. Couldn't imagine how I would feel if we had caught as many as the other boat.

Jeff I just wanted to say thanks again for the great day of fishing and I hope we can do it again.

[eburghunter]

Nice. Looks like a fun trip

[Tony 270]

I can't wait to go tuna fishing! Supposed to be going early in the month. If it is as fun as I hear I'll try and go twice. You definitely got some good fish for the freezer.

[1morebuck]

Totally awesome! I wish my schedule would slow down enough for a tuna trip! Congratz Blsum  . Now are you getting ready for that deer hunt?

[h2ofowlr]

Some nice looking fish.

[Blsum]

Deer hunt is still a ways away. We've done one scouting/learning some road trip. I was hoping to get a few more trips in before our hunt. But I got laid off yesterday. So I'm not sure what's happening right now.