Fished out of La Push Saturday and Sunday with Lingcod Todd (Girtz), Dave Beee (Killerbee), and Dave's good buddy Jeff. Since Todd usually isn't a man of many words (as he doesn't need to say much with deckloads of giant fish on a weekly basis) I decided to give a little larger report than you can find from the man at http://toddsextremefishing.blogspot.com/ .
When fishing with Todd, don't plan on sleeping much as it is dawn to dark, our trip began Friday night departing Todd's house at 11:30pm to make it to La Push by greylight to launch. Weather was good and the run out to the previous weeks numbers was uneventful as his North River easily handled the light chop and SE breeze. Dave hits the first fish in 20 minutes and brings it to the boat.
Looking at a nice high teen or twenty lb fish Todd quickly releases it as he states that this isn't quite what were looking for. The crew having all previously fished Westport this season were thinking man that would have been bonked no questions asked, but were were out looking for the BIG Boys. We had another King go with a long release and then we went on a 6 hour grind of Pinks and Finned Coho till mid afternoon. Dave and I took turns on rods getting rattled by silvers and pinkerton's. Finally with our pinks in the boat we get a real bite, and Jeff jumps on it.
Dave was the man clearing tangles and a dynomo on gear management.
Todd rolls in for net honors to put a small fish in the box to get on the board with a King.
In the boat Jeff takes stock of his prize.
Now that we have relocated the right depth on the cable we reload and enjoy the NatGeo channel off of stern of whales, porp's, birds galore - albatrosses (yes alberts were in the house big time.) Killer Bee grabs some jerky and his rod get violated.
Here was the rig that got our afternoon rolling.
Dave and Jeff with some of the afternoon deep water bounty.
Todd goes to bat to wrap up our limits.
Unfortunately, a bellbouy of a sealion took notice of Todd's struggling salmon and delayed the completion of our day. Dave took the wheel to give chase but after 30 minutes we break off and go back to work to wrap up.
The boys are still in good spirits.
Finally another fish hits and sticks.
Dave showing off some of the days bounty.
OK... final talley for day one, 12 salmon (felt SLOW). 8 pinks, 4 kings. Couldn't buy a clipped silver. Fishing really dropped off but being too tired to hit Westport we opt to stick it out and hit the area of life we hit late and saved our day.
Onward to day 2. Refreshed by a 5 hour nap we go back to the area we now call the Sea World spot. Lines in and in less than 5 minutes....FISH ON!
Look at Todd's jacket.... A true OXYMORON, Todd in his "save our fish" jacket.
Our single turns into a double as we slid in gear.
Dave and Todd getting ready for the tuna tango in the near future, warm up with the salmon shuffle this day.
And this hen ready for the box.
Todd putting his PIG on display.
Daves "unclipped" fish that was a hatchery fish with the wire in its head - as we learned later from the fish checker.
Jeff sporting chrome.
videos of Dave and Jeff on fish.
Now it was time to experiment. Todd sticks to what has worked for him for years, so the hotspot greenglow and matching hootchie were what we ran. Now with a bite going on we opted to see how the the breakaway NUCLEAR CRUSH fishes against the green glow hotspot - both with same leader and hootchie.
What's your hypothesis? It only took 30 seconds to find out.
Fighting the fish, not the flasher ROCKS, no obnoxious vibrations, no more lost fish when the flasher "pops" out of the water. Just me and the fish!
Let's re-test. 2 minutes pass and ..... FISH ON!
C-Qove is getting it done.
Dave ready to release a small one to fight another day.
Break away Q-Cove NUCLEAR CRUSH - crew approved.
Dave on again.
All done at 8am.
Once we wrapped up, we took off to get some bottom grabbers. Fishing with Lingcod Todd for Deep water cod has got to be a bucket list item for most, and for us we were not disappointed with the deep drops.
Lings, boccaccio, yellowtail rockfish, and the very cool Black cod all took an electric elevator ride up to the North River.
We rocked it with Salmon limits, ling limits, and a huge mixed bag of fish taco material.
Back to Todd's house at 3am Monday. If you fish with Lingcod Todd, bring your stamina - But it's worth it. Thanks for the invite - loved putting serious poundage on the boat. Killer Bee, Jeff, you guys rocked it - it was a pleasure fishing with you, and would gladly do it again anytime.
The ocean is the bomb for salmon, go getcha some...
T-Rip, OUT!
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