Grew up fishing plugs year around on a bamboo meatline and a Pakron 3180 in the early/mid 70s. Every so often we trolled around the ever reliable Pt Defiance spoons or huge 13-inch spring brass flasher and hoochies. However a 4-inch Macs Squid plug #15 (Point Special) was tremendously hard to put in the tackle box in winter. The 5 and 6-inch plugs were absolutely deadly in the spring and summer. I didn't really get into downriggers until the mid 90's.

My last 2-years in Washington I pretty much fished meatlines exclusively. Not much sport until you get to the last 30-feet of line on a summer fish. However when we had larger fish back in the day that last 30-feet of line... You better have some skill on the tiller, rod and net!


Did you get out in the salt this past weekend? We were 15 miles out of Gold Beach and had a flat ocean to ourselves. 41 albacore in 3 days.

Speaking of fishing two lines... I remember way back when Ned Krilich (Krilich Killer plug fame) got a ticket for fishing 7 plugs (7-lines) off his meatline. Of course we could fish "up to three hooks" back in those days. Ned took the ticket to court and had it reduce to "fishing with 4 hooks." If you can find a few of his wooden plugs- fish them! They were all white with a red face and no eyes. We called them "blind plugs."

I thought after 44-years of working the saltchuck, I would miss it terribly. But life on the Rogue is phenomenal! Different bred of people and life here.



[img]https://i.imgur.com/urrOzqi.jpg?1[/img]