Just got home from a bunch of running around and doing errands after fishing. Fished the NorthWest Point of Bainbridge today with herring and sliding sinker mooching rigs. First thing this morning my nephew who is here from Florida see's his rod tip bury in the water. After some serious coaching and some spectacular jumps we netted his biggest fish so far. A beauty 25 pound hen hatchery king. He cant even hold it straight out for a good picture. Later while trying to burn up the bait I was giving my Dad who is also here from Florida some drift mooching lessons when I watch him getting a bite that developed in to a 10 - 12 pound hatchery king. I baited hooks, drove the boat, netted the fish today, and had as much fun as they did. -TBJ

Great report, way to put the crew on the fish!

Good day to be on the water. Got twin 15 pounders and discovered they were actually triplets while fishing for my two remaining pinks. off by 7am. I think it was my new fishing partner

Think Coop and TBJ have put in more hours than most this season, nice to see the effort paying off with some chromers...cheers

Damn, I've been replaced by a dog

Nice work Coop, we loved the pup!

Nice job and good looking partner.

great lookin pup!


revisiting the sickles, I am done with them. fished a capt downriggin spoon yesterday with a sickle and lost 5 fish on it. i am thinking of either running back to back sickles or tying up a couple of 4/0 gamis to run as a pair behind the spoon. i know i am not the only one losing fish on spoons this year. there has to be a way to improve the hookup to landed ratio.

A lot better looking too. I first thought the kennel was a crab pot...nice fish!

Thats why I dont like to use flashers for summer kings, and run cutplug herring because of fish coming unglued. The flasher works the barbless hook out of there mouth, atleast that is what I thought it was. For blackmouth I like spoons and attach the flasher to the downrigger and run the spoon close and hardly lose a fish.
I guess I just got tired of fish peeling line and coming off using flashers an dont have that problem as much as I dont use them hardly anymore.

Nice looking pup Sup.
Have fun with the next 6 mos of chewing!
Mine is finally done with that at 1 year old.

Also if trolling against the current you need to leave the boat in gear while playing the fish. Take it out of gear and you are backing down on him providing slack.

i hear you rockfish. I will try fishing a straight spoon tonight and see what happens. I agree that it is the flasher and i am so sick and tired of fish peeling line and then just coming unbuttoned. i am not losing fish on my hootchies though so there must be some way to make them stick with a spoon better than they have been.
I love to fish cutplugs but hate paying for it.

D3, I'm not sure why you're loosing fish, that's weird using the sickles. For Coyote's, we run a split ring, barrel swivel, then the 3/0 sickle, Coho killers, we take the ring off, put our own split ring on, barrel swivel, then a 2/0 sickle. Ace-Hi's and hootchies, we run 18 to 26" of leader, double 3/0 sickles with beads between the two hooks and the trailer hook being behind the hootchie itself or Ac-Hi and we RARELY loose a fish, like hardly ever. All are ran with 40 pound test leader. We switched to this last year and have excellent results on summer kings and blackmouth, like almost perfect results, I can hardly think of a fish we did loose. We do run a tight drag too, sometimes when too much line gets taken off for a peeler the line angle can pull a hook, or the fish turns with bad line angle and can pull a hook, but I'm sure you already know that. I just can't believe your loosing that many fish. Maybe it's just a streak of bad luck. I hope that changes soon for ya. The only fish we lost this year was one Vedder had on, it was a small blackmouth or humpy, I'm saying humpy, and he didn't take it too serious and pretty much tried to loose it, which he did by the boat, mostly cuz he didn't want to be know for catching skanks.

I do the same thing with the split rings and swivles. I have been running the custom capt downriggin kingfishers and some coho killers when i go up north. The only thing i see different is my leader length which has been at 30-36 for hootchies and 40-46 for spoons. 40# maxima or #50 ande flouro. i am setting my clips as tight as possible and deep. I have never had so many hard take downs as i have this year, litterally having rods pinned into the rod holder and peeling line, only to come unpinned... i hope its just bad luck but i am going to try some other hook combos and see what happens.

Must be some bad luck D3, which sucks, but will turn around soon and hopefully the luck turns the other way. There has been some vicious take downs this year and some BIG fish, including a couple of pigs taken at mid-channel yesterday, though it was not hot there. We have had two break offs where the fish hit so hard, burried the rod, released and broke the leader, I like them vicious hits and it's worth the leader breakage to see the hit. Pretty much as good as a burried K16.

pehaps its the longer leader when using spoons behind flashers. I experienced the same with spoons two yrs ago. Switched to the JIm's BreakaWay flasher for spoons and it improved my landing percentage on spoons. 48", 30lb leader on spoons, sickle siwash from RvrFisher. Love the hook.

No problems with lost fish on hoochies-Ace Hi's & Hot Spot flasher. But much shorter leader used; 28-34".

Sounds like just one of them days D3. Take into account that you losing 5 fish in one day is waayyyy better than most get to see. Doesnt make it any easier, but hey [censored] happens. Next day out you will land 100% and not even think twice.

Rico, why do you use a bead between the hooks? I don't, and am confused how it helps (is it just a visual, or mechanical thing?)

I use the beads first cuz in lessons the chewing of the leader between the two hooks so the trailer hook has less a chance of getting worn off on some teeth, but mostly for more color, I use neon green beads with some bright pink beads mixed in the middle, sometimes red. All I know is when I set it up this way, I was catching fish, so I just keep doing it ya know, one of those things, and I keep telling people I fish with to do it too. The Ace_Hi looks awesome in the water with the beads, I know it doesn't look the same 120' down, but hey, it works so I'm sticking to it. But then again, whatever ya fish with the most is probably gonna work the best for ya. You know how that goes.