jason bait was at the fuel depot and the troll from the depot to yukon harbor, is was shallow earlier but 110ft or more later in the day, but I was snagging herring on my jig then rig them live and have them swim around the bottom till the rod quit shaken, had a good takedown. Ben

spawnout is it always rough up there, is it worse than sekiu or neah bay do you think. I want to fish there but an hour ride just to see unfishable water wouldn't be cool. have you gone out in sequim or port angelos in your boat before, wonder if theres protected blackmouth fishing up there? its a long shaft but I try to avoid rough water, point no point area with a little chop is about it as far as being comfortable with the conditions. one day I hope to have a bigger boat. seen some at the sportsman show for pretty cheap payments. Ben

I'll be out in the morning. Good tide tomorow morning. Hopefully some fish. Next weekend is the Brownsville and Manchester Derbys anyone fishing either?

manchester I hope, haven't heard about it yet, thats not sayin much, bay street outfitters has tickets huh?

Okay, here's your weekend Puget Sound blackmouth report. Saturday we fished Jeff Head-very slow! Not much bait around, but did manage to land a 6 and a 7. Sunday we wanted to try for larger fish so north we went to Poss. Bar. Man, that run-off was rippn' Fished all morning and released one 20 inch fish. Fished hard until low slack then bam a double! Mine was the first in, a nice 11 # fish. Dad was still working on his. Ten minutes later a beautiful 15 # blackmouth hits the net! All in all a great weekend on the water-we don't get days like this in March very often!

And here's your report from Midchannel - fished it both days. Saturday it was slow until a couple hours before low, when I hit a fish after seeing a couple other small ones hooked. Nice fish, maybe 8-9, but I'll never know because just as I was reaching for the net I got sealed - bugger took me under the boat and thrashed my fish so bad on the other side that it busted it off, coyote and all! After much unmentionable behavior and language I put on another spoon, ran back up, ran through the drift again, and hit another one - 10 pounds this time - kind of horsed it in but managed to net it anyway unscathed. While I was bleeding it out my buddies hooked up right next to me and managed to land an 11 pounder. After a few pics I left - when I talked to them that evening they had hooked 4 more before slack, lost one to a seal, lost a couple to horsing them in to avoid the seal, and landed a 5 pounder which they released in hopes for a double digit job, but no luck.

Sunday I took my wife out there, tried to hit just the good part of the tide, and hooked nothing, saw nothing hooked, and when I finally bunched it after low and hit the launch found out that some early birds hit them at 0 dark 30 before high. Oh well, water was as calm both days as I have ever seen it - there was so much sunshine it was annoying (although the northwest wind off the Olympics was cold as hell, just ask my wife!), there was bait all over the place - almost too much - there were very few boats, and I did catch my largest of the season so far, so all in all not bad.

Rockfish, sounds like your boat will handle water about as well as mine, and I do fish out of Sekiu, Neah Bay, PA, etc., but only when no small craft warnings are predicted, and I stay pretty close to the launch as I have a top speed of about 20. At Midchannel, if the weather report is for 5-15 and 1-2 foot wind waves I'll fish it, but not if it is going to be any worse than that. I keep my eyes open and run for it if I feel anything that might be a 20+ gust coming. This past weekend was great, and today it was so flat that you could have fished it in a duck boat.

I dont think that I have ever fished so long with NOTHING! happening. We trolled Restoration Point, Manchester and Allen Bank Saturday and then north to Jeff Head Yesterday. We had three downriggers at various depth's with various baits, including Herring, both plug cut and whole, with and without inject herring oil, coyote spoons, plugs, you name it, it probably got wet. We had one herring come back chewed up a bit.

RBF's boat is a 32' Grand Banks. He just got her in November.What a pleasure it is to fish on such a nice boat. RBF has 3 Penn 600's mounted on
her. We are yet to put a fish on it. Do you think she may have an "Electrical or Magnetic Field" problem. Do we need a "Black Box", or are we just the only crackers who couldn't buy a fish in area 10?

Gutz,
You weren't the only one that hit 10 hard...I put everything down and the only action was two shakers on a splatter-back silver horde. Didn't mark any bait but numbers of larger fish. Didn't see one net come out all day.
Manchester should at least put out shakers. Too bright and sunny?

Hey Gutz, it's important to make sure your boat is not putting off a voltage that is either too high, or too low. It's a long and complicated thing, but the Scotty web site has a good explaination of it. Basically, you want between 0.4V+ and 0.8V+ when measured between the negative terminal on your battery (- probe) and your downrigger wire (+ probe). If you have any other questions, email me.

That said, even with a "tuned" aluminum boat (0.62V+ without the box) AND a black box (to fine-tune and pulse the voltage), if the fish aren't there, you're not likely to catch them. I proved that on Sunday, fished out of John Wayne Marina, didn't touch a fish all day, didn't see any bait. The view was nice though.

-N.

I caught shakers at Manchester. probably two or three dozen. But the action ran in spurts. Would catch a half dozen real quick and couldn't find them for another hour. Small fish will be able to win the derbies this weekend. Marked some bait not near as much as normal though.

Fished aaaaaaal day on Sat @ Hat Isl and didn't touch a thing. The people that I saw w/ fish @ the launch in the pm all got theirs pre-dawn. QUESTION: What have you found is the best tide to fish, does it make a difference???

Thanks for all the reports guys - now I don't feel so bad about getting skunked on Sunday, and feel DAMN good about hooking 2 on Saturday I'll post the pic of one that my buddies took of me this last weekend and sent to me on my work computer if I get time tomorrow.

For blackmouth in the areas I fish the last 2 hours before low seems to be the hot time. And did I hear someone fishing various depths? Got to fish on the bottom, and I mean within 5 feet and hitting it occasionally, if you are going to consistently connect on blackmouth. I actually wear the chrome off of Hotspot flashers from banging them on the bottom

Low slack has been producing best for our boat. Either side of it works fine. My brothers girlfriend picked up her first sunday-12lbs. Between the tides we haven't been marking much and it's been slow. So far hoochies and spoons have accounted for all our fish. Haven't limmited the boat yet but haven't got skunked yet so that's pretty good.

Hey Spawnout. I disagree. Allot of Blackmouth will suspend when not activly feeding and take baits. Also first thing in the morning and leter in the evening the fish will come up into the water column. If you fish just the bottom all day every day you are missing allot of fish. I had 5th and 6th place fish at Manchester Derby last year 8#1amd 8#6 and both were caught at 32 ft.

Jason S

Well I dunno, Jason, I have caught a few blackmouth fish suspended in midwater, when I occasionally see fish up off of the bottom on the screen under a bait stack and go after them there, but by far the vast majority of the fish I see and catch are on the bottom. And I run sidescan sonar and see a lot of fish. I'd much rather fish the higher percentage area.

Here's a ten pounder that came off the bottom last weekend

Crap, guess my pics are too dense to post on the BB - copy the URL into your browser to see it I guess

Spawnout, try resizing your image to no bigger than, say, 640 pixels wide, and leave out the space in in the filename between "Midchannel" and "Blackmouth", it gets interpreted as "%20" and throws off most browsers.

-N.

We did spend most of the time trying to stay as close to the bottom as we could. My buddies are a little paranoid about dragging their balls though. I will bounce 'em write off and then crank up a bit. The only guy's we saw hooked up on Jeff Head Sunday said they were trolling 80 feet, so we did give that a try.

StorminN;
Is there some way to test the boat for the electrical field without spending $100s ?

Gutz,
Here is a link to the Scotty page that walks ya through the test you are looking for without the blackbox. http://www.scottyusa.com/blackbox2.html
Hope this helps ya out.
Good luck and tight lines, Jeff