I know its an odd time of year to ask the question, but I have heard people were using extra large sardine lures, not fresh ones, for kings out of westport. So, my question is, what type of lures are these, soft baits, hard baits, home made? or am I being fed a line of fishing folk-lore?

Thanks in advance for your help.

JW

Maybe they were talking about big lead jigs painted to look like sardines. Perhaps large spoons or Apex lures with a sardine-looking finish.

I will say we caught a lot of Westport salmon this past summer with nothing but HUGE 10-12 inch sardines in their stomachs. We found a 12 inch sardine in a 10# coho! No wonder these gluttons can gain so much weight so quickly.

One day at Westport this summer I saw several purse seiners working and heard them talking on the radio..I did not realize at the time that they were seining sardines. Most of the fish we caught we feeding on sardines in the 10-14" size...the skin dissolves faster than herring so some people were talking of large herring but the feed was definitely sardines. Much higher protein to be had in sardines than herring so the salmon were fat and growing fast. I used a 6" nickle plated spoon with no flasher at all depths and participated in atleast one 100 fish days....yes 100 salmon for three fishermen caught and released before noon. I used the same spoon for weeks.....The spoon is not available locally and is normally used on the Great Lakes. The large Silver Horde spoons had the same high catch rate. My biggest King of the year was caught on a flasher and Yama****a squid behind a Hot Spot flasher at 130 feet down in 220 feet of water approx 15 miles offshore.

Grandpa we know how to spell. Yamamoto does make good rubber squid and worm baits.

Sardines and anchovies can make for a good trolling bait if you firm them up in a rock salt brine to help them stay on the hook longer. I just am always concerned if my bait is still rolling or even on the hook.

When the fishing is hot the salmon strike before they soften and come undone. But when it's hot then herring is all you need anyway, so I usually just stick with those. The big blue pack size or large 8 inch fresh ones work great out of Westport and Tillamook for big kings. IMHO

Better call Kelly Morrison with Silver Horde and tell him that Bob's auto-censor feature won't allow me to spell the name brand of his hootchies> Yama****a

Not Yamamoto.....Yam...A....She...TA

Can anyone tell me the difference between an anchovie and a sardine?

2 beers

Grandpa,
If those are the same squid I bought last year to put hootchie skirts on my spinners I think the appropriate spelling is

Yama$hita...

$8 for a 10 pack of the mini pink... ouch...

The first 40+ # King and big silvers had huge sardines in them this year at Westport. Out of PSA SnoKing we had the first 40# and its stomach was HUGE. It had fish in its belly bigger than anything you can buy. A 14" Sardine was in it along with a ton of other fish. This gave me the idea to switch from herring oil to sardine oil. We trolled the black label, purple label herring, and huge sardines. We used a flasher. To use bait this big you really have to extend the leader length. Usually 9'-11' would let the bait spin and the flasher work. Anything much shorter fought against itself. We sued the biggest spoons available. My son's 43# swallowed a Silver Horde heavy gauge Canadian 6 1/2. This spoon is haevy enough that it needs a minimum of 6' of leader between the flasher and spoon. A heavy spoon or huge bait will kill the action. Make sure and troll with it up towards the top of the water so you can see it before you assume it is working and let it down. We trolled hole herring and anchovies.

Piper that is the correct spelling for the Silver Horde squid....sor some reason the A at the end is a different color so it makes the $hit part stand out....the hootchies are the best quality I have found. They are made with very high quality raw materials and have deep colors and will suspend well in the water.

The Northern anchovy which is seasonally common in our offshore waters and likewise, the pacific sardine are like apples and water mellon. Anochovies have no spots and only reach about 2/3 the length and at best half the weight. The biggest anchovy I've ever seen came from the net pen in westport and was about 6-7" long. @bouy 10 they used to sell yo-zuri plugs for Big Bucks that did effectively imitate sardys. I fish out of Neah bay and that's were I've seen the biggest schools of bait I've ever seen in the NW, Sardys and herring. The only place we've seen choves out there was 50 miles off the beach twards the tuna grounds. An effective plug for us to imitate sardines was a LARGE tomic plug dotted with a perminent marker. This good ol' tomic hanging off my sreen here has the teeth marks you would have to see to believe and it only fished for two weeks ever. Hardly ol' at all. The great thing about tomic style plugs is they require no tuning. Heck comercial trollers use them. The problem with them is the strike to hook-up ratio stinks so I wouldn't suggest using them in the sound or where fishing is slow. But in the ocean, try one 30-40 feet behind the DR ball. Some plugs work much better than others, even amongst tomics but you'll have to figure out which.
Plugs, it'll be all of our little big secret.
Still can't beat a flasher and whatever for action though.
Sardines don't make good cut plugs, way too soft. Live might be interesting though.
Another baitfish out there that big is the sary. Its long and needle-like, kinda like a candle fish or sand lance with a mackeral like tail. I found one in a coho this year and a couple in some albacore. In the early 90's or late 80s a charter out of Neah Bay had a 36lb King with a Mackeral in it. Don't ask me how he caught it, but it was the stubby pacific variety, not the thin yellow shaded ones.
My biggest king in the salt hit a smallish jig though. Go figure.
Can't wait till summer. Fish Neah, No Bar crossing and great king fishing from open to close. Nicer senery and more wildlife to boot. Less Blue Sharks and a good marina too