Well, this weekend I am making my first trip to Sekui and wondering if I can get any information that would help for the trip. First of all I have a 16ft polarcraft. Is there any place that I should avoid. I am not in the mood to put this baby on the bottom of the ocean. If anyone has any other info i.e. what the fish have been hitting I would greatly appreciate the help.

devine

once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

Use the search feature with Sekiu and Dogfish, that'll get 'ya what 'ya need.

Hi Devine,

Your best bet is to head straight out of the bay and start fishing once you hit the 100' line. We had downriggers, but didn't use them at all.

We rigged up 2 to 4 oz sinkers with ball bearing swivels on both ends, short 4 foot leaders on our mooching rigs (30 lb test), and trolled brined plug cut herring.

Trolled between 2 and 6 mph land speed per gps, about 3-4 kts water speed. Our best luck was within a half mile of the beach due north of Olson's, and we usually headed west. Bring GPS if ya got it, as the fog rolls in quickly. That is probably your biggest issue out there. One other safety note is that there are some pretty good rips out there and they can still create some big waves on a calm day, so remember to take all large waves at a quarter, NEVER EVER STRAIGHT ON!!!!!!! Straight on is 12 o'clock, quartering is about 1:30. This will help avoid taking a wave over the bow as we saw a small 14 foot aluminum get doused. Wind does whip up the waves a bit at times, just go slow, and if the waves are too rough, you can always fish the bay or cast buzzbombs from the beach between Coho and Olson's.

Short leaders made netting and controlling the fish easier once they got near the boat. The 30lb test may seem excessive, but the last thing I want to do when the fish are biting FAST AND FURIOUS, is to be tying a leader with only one rod in the water. Tried light leaders, but we ended up with a lot of trailer hooks that broke off and had to retie. These fish are not leader shy either, and we even caught one fish on bare hooks when left in the water waiting for an opportunity to rebait.

Plug cut your bait the night before figuring about 3 dozen per person. I use that little Luhr Jensen plug cutting guide for consistency. Remove the guts, and then add about a cup and a half of salt to about half a gallon of water. I use canning and pickling salt. We kept our bait in a 1 gallon plastic jug that once contained salad dressing, like the bulk containers used by restaurants. A plastic gallon milk jug with part of the top cut off will also work.

If you have a choice between getting out on the water at 5:30 am, or some morning nookie with the wife, get out on the water! The morning bite has been tremendous. We caught 30 fish is 2 hours and lost half again that many fish. We were also trolling one rod with artificials for one hour total without a single bite during the same time period, so I would stick to the bait.

Check the tide as well, especially if your are on a timetable to leave. Some of the launches are hard to get out of on a very low tide.

If you can't catch fish this way, get rid of your gear. Best of luck, and give us a report. Andy

[ 08-21-2001: Message edited by: Dogfish ]

Andy,
Much appreciated my brother.... I will give her a whirl and post the reports. Not sure where I am going to find herring in the Port Orchard area, but I will make something work. Thanks a million for the advise and the little lessons that will prevent me from being sunk.
adios
devine

Yikes. Just talking about taking water in a 14' boat in the fog on the Straits (probably with no VHF) gives me the creeps. This would put you in the running for the 2001 Darwin Award. Your chances of rescue in this situation are pretty low, since it won't take but a couple minutes to completely swamp that size boat once you take that first wave, and your freeboard goes down to about 6 inches. If you think you will just swim to shore, figure out how far you can swim in 30 minutes, fully clothed, in rough water, with the wind blowing you away from shore. It will take about 30 minutes for your muscles to give up in 50-degree water, as your body restricts bloodflow to your extremities in order to preserve bloodflow to the brain and body core.

Forget about a cell phone, who are you going to call that can get to you in 20 minutes, and how wet can your phone get before it goes T-U?

If you are in waters rough enough so that you can't take the waves bow-on, you are in dire straits -- how are you going to motor back to safe water? There is only maybe a 50-50 chance that the direction you have to go to get to safe waters puts the waves on your quarter. Even then, there is a decent chance that a bigger-than-average wave will flip you clean over.

They're just fish, guys. Please think long and hard before compromising your safety for a hot bite. Fog + waves + low freeboard = death. Know your boat's (and your own) limits.

Regards.

Mike
Woodinville

mike,,,
No doubt man. Did not say we were risking life and limb my brother. just telling us what to watch out for. believe me I love chinooky but not as much as nooky. and you can't get that on the bottom of the ocean.
later on
devine

Devine,

Coho Resort in between Sekiu and Clallam Bay has frozen herring for $3.00 a dozen. I used green and red labels. Never did buy any fresh. You can always cut your bait on the dock and start brining right then, but it might be nice to get at least a few dozen going the night before.

The waves kicked up by some of the rips really surprised me on Saturday. The water was very calm and flat for Sekiu, but some of these rips had some pretty tall waves at a VERY short frequency. I got sprayed, but that was all. We went over to that little boat and tossed him a line, drug him out of the rip, and after he bailed out about 30 gallons of water, all was well. I agree about not having a deathwish, so if the waves are bigger than you can handle in your 16 footer, stick to the bay, or buzzbomb the beach.

The quartering method will help you to get out of the nasty rips, but if you have to quarter all day, the water is too rough for you.

Andy

The amount of tide change last weekend had everything to do with those rips being the way they were... I ran into the same sort of thing off the end of Dungeness spit on Sunday.

Devine, if you have trouble finding herring or would rather no bother with bait, just use spoons with a little Smelly Jelly on them. I've fished near Pillar Point a bunch of weekends this year, we've done great using Silver Horde coho killers, kingfishers and also coyote spoons. Try to match them sizewise to the bait you see in the area. We ended up just trolling them off the downriggers, no flashers, nothing but the spoons. We even tried trolling a buzzbomb, and jigging it up and down a little while trolling, we caught something like 14 fish that way, too.

Enjoy, and let us know how you do.

-N.

Kudos for taking the time out of your fishing to help those guys out! They were lucky you were within visual range. Were they rowing, or had their motor quit?

30 gallons (240 pounds) might not sound like much, but remember that the water is going to pool up in the stern of a small boat, where the freeboard is already minimum, and may make it hard to stand back there to get the motor going.

Enough doom-and-gloom, though. Hope you have a great day up there, and hope you have the kind of success Dogfish has been having. I'll be at Humpy Hollow with my dad and my 6-year old.

Regards.

Mike
Woodinville

The guys in the little boat had a 9.9 kicker and it wasn't running because the deadman switch got disconnected when the driver got knocked down to the floor. I cleared a path for them with my wake. Those were some steep waves. I only had to tow them out about 30 yards and they were clear of the chop. Their engine started right up after they got everything situated.

Man, that sounds like a hairball situation!!

I have to ask, did they have life vests on?

-N.

For a minute there, I thought I was rereading "The Perfect Storm". This doesn't sound like the same Seiku we used to fish in a wooden kickerboat powered by a 5 hp Merc. With this boat/motor combo we fished the waters of Clallam Bay and west to The Hoko. We didn't have Loran C, GPS, or even a compass; we depended on visual contact with the shoreline, and when that failed, the sound of waves breaking on the beach, or the sound of our boat breaking up on the beach We did become more reliant on technology as time went on. On one of our last trips out of Seiku, the nationwide Loran C system went TU(not Trout Unlimited) during bow-obscuring fog. That day, we depended on a compass and a depth finder to get us back to port safely. Those two navigational aids have brought us home numerous times since, and I would consider them to be essential equipment for fishing "big water".

Dogfish, one successful fisherman I met in Seiku always added borax and powdered milk to his saltwater herring brine. His baits were firm, shiny, and fished as well as our fresh/frozen ones. Thanks for the detailed reports.

[ 08-21-2001: Message edited by: CedarR ]

They were not wearing vests. My son was wearing his, and while I wasn't wearing mine, it was at my side.

Cedar,

I have tried a number of these special brine recipes, and have not seen any difference between the different methods, except for adding "bluing" which made the bait VERY BRIGHT. I still caught as many fish when fished next to plain salt brine. I like to keep thing simple, as I tend to carry enough crap up there every time I go.

I'll give you folks a report after Labor Day.