Fished out of Edmonds with Irishrogue this AM, and the plan was to stay close and check out local haunts since the tides were favorable for a few holes I know, and we had a network of buddies in different spots, so we could move if we heard of a hot bite. Turns out we made the right choice as we found a few within a 7 iron of the Edmonds Breakwater.

Day started off unfavorably. I ratnested the hell out of my Islander while stringing up my rod , then on the first drop, the Downrigger cable snaps mid-drop for no apparent reason. A couple minor setbacks and we are fishing. Irish, being the nice guy he is, gives me the other rigger while he fixes the broken cable...

A bit later and I latch into a fish, turns out to be right at 22". Hatchery blackmouth, but we decide to let it loose in hopes that it will give us a shot of good fishy karma for the rest of the morning...it might have worked.

1/2 hour or so later, my rod trips and we land a nice 10#'er for the first blood of the season. Woot!

Around 7 am Irish's rod trips, good fish, but it gets off.
Things slow, and we start thinking that maybe he should change out his downrigger that lost a lot of cable cause he can only get down 65 feet until he is at the end of the spool of cable. Just as we are breaking out the manual rigger so he can go deeper, his rod get's totally hammered, big takedown, and the fight is on! I guess 65 feet of cable was enough

I don the helmet cam and start filming as Irish gets the fish to the boat. We can tell it's big as it takes line a few times...& Sweet music sings from the knucklebuster...

The result!


...and here's both of 'em. Irish's fish weighed 'bout 20 on the nose.


Specifics: We fished south of Edmonds between the point and oil docks, and right off the breakwater. There was a HUGE school of green label sized herring off the breakwater later in the morning...& the big fish had a few in her belly.
Fish were taken on Flasher/Silver Horde Cotton Candy and White lightning Coho Killers
65 and 101 feet.




Good luck out there folks....& I Cant wait to get out again! Thanks again Irish!

Nice fish!!! I'm dying here at work today.

Congrats Sky-Guy & IrishRogue!
It's awesome playing Nookies on those smooth Islanders!
Way to go guys!

A bad start like that, seldom ends good...Nice report and great looking Kings!!!!!!!

Nice fish and a beautiful day. Tough to do better than that.

nice fish brian! thanks for the report...i'll be out in the am. thinking about pilot point, tide looks perfect. anybody else???



willy

Nice fish guys!

What's this about a helmet cam?

cant wait to get out of here today, point no point is waiting

Rogue has a nifty hardhat-style helmet with a wireless self-contained cam mounted on the side so we can film hands-free. I can think of a number of good uses for it..

Sweet Coho Rogue, they're early this year!

Great report Sky-Guy!

I ended up releasing two wild silvers, 1 clipped blackmouth and 1 wild 18ish pound king.

TJCarroll Sr whacked and stacked another clipped 18ish pound fish.

Know of quite a few board members that got in to some fish today. TBJ and Sleddddddder were on fire. I think Supcoop had at least one, if not two.

Looked to be a good opener.



PS. Who was in the boat hollering out to me this am? You obviously knew or recognized me, but I couldn't tell who you were.

i landed a silver at jeff head, and my buddie broke off a big one.

Parker, you know you can keep the wild ones this year, right?

got pics?

Kings or the coho?

Ever seen a grown man cry???? Don't say kings.....



Didn't really care about the coho. That might explain why the fish checker lady thought I was nuts for letting the coho go. D'oh!

I really hope you're yanking my chain. Gonna have to actually read the regs now.

Got some pics, but not in a place to post them. I'll try to get them up tonight.

Sky-Guy & Parker,
Thanks for the reports. What size were the silvers Parker?

What I'd call doinkers. Mabbe 3-4 pounders. Just a "tad" bigger than a shaker, but not by much.

Big enough to pop the line off of the rigger and get one all excited until you set the hook and there's no real weight on the other end.

They reverted the MA9 wild coho retention restriction this year, so, you can keep them anywhere in the sound as far as I know.

bummer! those smaller resi's are still great bbq fare!

Even knowing that now, I would have still released them. Pretty sure the clipped king I got would have been over 22". I still would have released it, too.

Don't you remember - I sort through my fish as not to mess up the quota.

Just got home heres the scoop. We went 3 for 6 with a 23 pounder, a 14, and an an 8 or 9 pounder I shoulda kept. We lost two confimed toads and one that most likely would have gone in the box. We got 9 keeper dungeness and here was what I thought was the coolest part of the day. We caught 3 true cod. I have hardly seen any true cod in our area in many many years. Tom Carrol said he had got one as well. Nice to see them rebounding. Finally. See ya out there tomarrow. -TBJ