2025-09-06 Salmon Fishing

A few days prior to this the mechanic replaced the bowls on both sea strainers, so I am no longer grounded!

We have been having an extended (and unusual) period of warm sunny weather. The "in town" people view this as great weather, and it is, but in our area when we have hot & sunny weather, we often get brisk NW winds along with it, which makes for rough water.

I asked a couple friends to go out with me for a day fishing trip but they both declined so I ended up going alone. Salmon trolling on my boat is best accomplished with at least 3 people. That way when a fish hits you can have one on the rod, one at the helm controlling the boat, and one to net the fish. Doing all of that alone is difficult.

Before I had the autopilot it was darn near impossible for me to troll for salmon alone. Now, with the autopilot, I can at least point the boat away from all the other boats in the area and get out on the back deck and work the gear. It is still difficult, but it is doable.

Here is a map snippet that shows my track for this trip.

The area labeled with a "1" is Vallenor Point. That's where I started out. I only fished there for about an hour. There were no other boats there and I got no action at all, so I decided to move.

I pulled the gear and ran over to the area marked with a "2." This is the Camaano Point area. I was hopeful that there were fish there because there were at least 50 other boats there. There were boats of all types, charter boats, private small boats, and even a few commercial salmon trolling boats.

People think because I have had boats for such a long time that I must be a good fisherman. In actuality, I don't think I am a very good fisherman. Yes, I catch fish from time to time, but not as often or as many as I would like.

I worked this area for about 3 hours. I tried various different rigs, and I changed the depth from time to time. But I was unsuccessful here and did not get any action at all, which was very disappointing.

There were 4 humpback whales working this area while I was there. They were moving around but always staying in the same general area. They would come up in a bubble feeding circle from time to time, which is quite impressive, but you never knew where or when that was going to happen, so I was unable to get that on camera. I did get a nice video one time when they just happened to surface very near to my boat. It made my visit to this area worthwhile, even though I landed no fish here.

After about 3 hours here with no action I pulled the gear and moved across Western Behm Canal to the area marked with a "3." This is the Tatoosh Rocks area. There were many boats here as well, but not quite as many as were in the Camaano Point area. I started trolling from Tatoosh Rocks towards the Pup Island area.

I had only had the gear down for about 15 minutes when I hit what turned out to be my only fish for this trip, a nice fat Silver. Netting a salmon by yourself is difficult. You have to stretch your one arm way high in the air to get the rod up high enough. And of course, the fish does not cooperate, so it is moving all around. And then with one hand you have to handle the long and unwieldy salmon net. It's difficult, but I got this one in the boat.

I continued fishing here for another couple of hours with no more action. Then I pulled the gear and headed in. It was nice to get at least one fish, but I would have liked to get a few more.

The only 2 choices are to give up and quit fishing or to keep trying, and I'm not going to give up.

I logged about 43 miles on this trip. The weather was nice, I got a fish, and I got to see some whales. All in all, a pretty good day on the water.