I headed out to Neah Bay for the weekend and experienced my greatest silver fishing. My 17 year old son, friend Dan B. and myself headed out to Swiftsure on Saturday to look for the silvers that are schooled up waiting on rain. The weather could not have been better. Sunny, no wind and the water was flat as a pond. We found several huge schools of coho. We followed a large rip line and could not believe how many fish we were seeing. The surface was boiling at times from feeding salmon. At other places the fish were shoulder to shoulder with their heads coming out of the water as they slurpped down the krill. It looked like the sockeye in the Cedar River except more densely packed and much greater numbers. We started hooking fish immediately and at such frequency that we took off the flashers and fished lone spoons (coho killer, sonic edges and coyote) and silver horde plugs. My son had a blast trolling a coho killer just below the surface using a 6 wt fly rod. By the end of the day we had caught 75 salmon and missed 36 ( not counting the numerous hits that didn't latch up solid). Included in that number was one 30 lb king and several mid teen blackmouth. The silvers were averaging 6 1/2 lbs with about 10 that were over 10 lbs. The largest clipped fish was 13 lbs. We didn't catch any of the huge coho that were abundant at Sekiu last October, they will probably come in later once the season has closed. I didn't keep accurate count, but it seemed that only 1 out of 7 fish was clipped. We struggled with a huge sealion for 10 minutes over a 9 lb silver. I was determined not to lose my good plug. The sealion ended up with the tail end 1/3 of the fish and since we could not determine if it had a clipped adipose, we had to "release" the fish. Watching several whales pass through the area completed a perfect day of fishing.

Deepwater

NICE! I was wondering where all the silvers are hiding.

Deepwater - Sounds like we stopped a little short on Saturday. We ran about 8 miles west of the whistle bouy initially (based on Friday reports) and had to work for fish (although we did get one wild fish that likely ran 18-20 pounds). After a couple of hour break to let the kids catch some rockfish, we ran out to the shipping lanes and began trolling east with the tide, and got into the fish pretty good about 5 miles straight out from the dump. Sunday we got blown and rained off the water early, but did manage to hit em good until then. Total coho landed for two days was around 50 fish, they ran about 6 to 1 wild to hatchery. Not bad by any standards (except maybe for the Straight in September.