Ship's Log April 28-May 1st 2020
Don’t Rush It
We worked real hard and real fast all day Monday the 27th to get to the stores to buy the rigging, get it ready, make our ice appointment, and get across that nasty ass Umpqua River Bar at high tide slack by 5:30pm. It was a windy day, but tomorrow is expected to be very nice, followed by a crappy ocean day, followed by a nice day, and then another. I figured we needed to get out across the bar when the time was exactly right for a safe cross, deal with the crap ocean on the way out, and fish starting on April 28th during that nice day...
Once we finally had it all ready to get ice, got ice, and then were ready to cross the bar, I called the Coast Guard for the bar report... Breakers in the south. That means NO GO. The bar is where the river meets the ocean. On the Umpqua here in Winchester Bay Oregon, we pay special attention to that!! The tide and the swell from the ocean meet together and MASH goes the waves. If it is breaking in the south, the normal safe travel lane, then you are going to have to wait... Many bad deals have happened on this bar over the years. It is one of the most unsafe crossings on the entire west coast of USA. I have lived my life of ocean fishing dealing with this bar, and have learned patience by having had these experiences.
When I heard the breakers were still happening during that particular time of tide, and knew the truth of it, I totally got RELAXED and breathed out a huge sigh of relief knowing I had the excuse not to rush it and charge out over that bar risking a very cold swim.
So, on Tuesday the 28th of April we waited until the slack low tide at afternoon to go out and enter a beautiful ocean and begin our 32 mile run to the salmon grounds. It took a while to get there, and once there we caught the evening bite for 3 fish.
Day 2 was the rough day expected with a blustery south wind. We still cannot properly get to the right slow troll speed. I lost that big 32 inch stabilizer last trip, and because of fact that Jeff cannot pull one, and I need to pull both of them every time, I switched to a smaller 28 inch stabilizer, bought a set of two, and installed them. These smaller stabilizers have half the weight of the 32 inch and do not slow us down. The 36 inch drogues do slow us down if combined with 24 inch sport style sea anchors, and the smaller stabilizers…But those sport sea anchors quickly failed into obliteration and we were off with too much speed on the troll in one direction. Frustrated, we landed 7 fish on day 2. I will get a troll valve attached to my transmission to cure this problem for good during the season break from May 5 to May 20.
Day 3 was the sweet spot in the forecast. I woke up early and made coffee. I schritched on Seanna and Apollo for a bit, then went down and fired up the main engine. Jeff crawled up out of bed, poured some coffee and schritched on the dogs for a minute or two also. We were able to set the gear immediately. The ocean is rich and abundant. We catch a LOT of ling cod and rockfish, halibut, and the salmon. We have a permit for incidental Halibut over 32 inches. We are regulated to toss back all ling cod and rockfish, so we do. These types of fishes were coming pretty fast, with 4 smaller halibut and countless rockfishes and lingcod coming up, but no salmon until about 9am. Then every now and then we got a salmon! They started to add up. Late in the day Jeff brought up a nice 38 inch halibut which we sold for $6.50 whole per pound. Shortly after that, a 24 pound salmon, which I konked while it was in the water still on the hook and I bet the whole world could hear the sound of that whack. I picked it up with the gaff afterwards and not a single twitch... We had 26 fish at 7pm. Getting late, about dusk, Jeff got a pumper and it was wild! He brought up 3 salmon on one wire, with hook number 4 consumed by a red rockfish. My side got to pumping too, and I brought in fish number 30, the last of that day. 30 fish that were 14 pound average at 10 bucks a pound gave about $4200 gross cash value to that one day. The next day was originally forecast to be nice, but the forecast changed into bad weather, so we headed in to plan a bar crossing back into Winchester Bay at 6am.
We cannot see out at night other than the radar showing other vessels and large objects. The windows looking forward are completely black at night. Irritating when knowing there is a bunch of crab gear floating on surface in 80 to 100 fathoms with thick line and 4 buoys. We managed to slide through without a sudden grind sound….
We napped a bit from 2am until 5am. I woke up and made coffee, then aimed for the bar in the morning light, got that great photo of the sun rising over the top of the Lucky Strike III. We sold our salmon after another much needed nap to a buyer for 10 bucks a pound and had 530 pounds for the trip with 40 fish. Sweet.
I write this at about 10:30pm with somewhat high expectations for trip 3 which begins with a bar crossing at about 5am tomorrow. It will be a rough 3 day trip, but I am willing to see what happens.
