Anacortes Derby 3

We finished off this past week with a live broadcast from the Anacortes Derby on Saturday morning and then jumped in Tom Nelson's boat after the show to fish the remainder of the derby in the San Juans. 1000 tickets were sold in just 9 days for this event and I'm guess-timating that 350 boats participated in the weekend long derby. Local participation by the Port of Anacortes, the Fidalgo Chapter of the Puget Sound Anglers, many of the local businesses, and the fact that Anacortes is flat-out a nice place to spend a weekend is why this derby is such a huge success.

Our lodging in Anacortes was provided by the Anaco Bay Inn, a very clean and quiet hotel a short distance from Cap Sante Marina. Welcome to Anacortes…lets get started! 

Jay Field of the Fidalgo Puget Sound Anglers chapter does an excellent job of chairing the event and starts off the evening with a quick presentation that includes charts of fishing areas in the islands and an introduction of his next venture, the high stakes Dash One Invitational to be held July 1st and 2nd in the Rosario Strait. The event boasts a $100,000 payout for first place!

Next up is Tom Nelson from The Outdoor Line with his "Dirty Downrigger Tricks" presentation.

John Keizer from SaltPatrol.com finished off the evening with more fishing techniques and what's this…a photo of Baby Nelly at age one with a bottle of Pautzke Baby Krill. 800 people now understand why Tom is so hopelessly addicted to salmon fishing.

After broadcasting The Outdoor Line live from a 27' Skagit Orca supplied by Master Marine Services in Mount Vernon Tom and I jumped in his boat and raced off to one of my old salmon haunts on the north side of Orcas Island. With spotty fishing reports from the islands leading up to the derby my plan was to fish herring and cover a lot of water. We didn't waiver from this game plan and it payed off.

It's pretty hard to fish my favorite San Juan blackmouth presentation, cut plug herring, at these speeds so we opted to use "worms in the hood", aka herring in a helmet. We yanked 10 and 13 pound blackmouth from a rocky and downrigger-ball-eating reef that was holding quite a bit of bait and missed a few more bites in the process. Not much screwing around here folks, as you've got to be on the downrigger switch's constantly to effectively work the blackmouth-holding crevices and drops in this neck of the woods or risk loosing downrigger balls and maybe even a downrigger if you're not careful. 

We ran three downriggers in the "canyonlands" and one of them was a Cannon that could be set to track the bottom. Tom would set the ball 5 feet off the bottom and watch the rigger do it's thang. I steered the boat along the edge of one of the rocky humps and the downrigger tracked the bottom perfectly. WHAMO…FISH ON!  

Notice the scrape marks on my 13 pound blackmouth. This fish was obviously rooting around on the bottom for his meals. 

My cell phone was ringing all day about big fish being taken by lucky anglers and back at the derby tent we were greeted by some really nice blackie's on ice. Ralph Thomas's winning fish, on the right, weighed an amazing 27.48 pounds. On Saturday morning I talked about how the best anglers in the San Juans work the islands rocky structure to score fish and that's exactly how Ralph and his comrades scored this hawg. They worked a rockpile near Obstruction Island for a couple hours on Saturday morning before scoring this fish. Way to go guys!

Just one of the many great things that the members of the Fidalgo PSA Chapter do is include the kids in this fishing event. Each one of these lucky kids went home with a brand new rod and reel perfect for salmon fishing.

Ralph Thomas can afford to buy quite a few rods with his first place check of $15,000. We just might be seeing Ralph and his fishing partners in the Dash One in July.

Congressman Norm Dicks, who is also a fanatic salmon fisherman, is presented with an award for his many contributions to sportfishing here in Washington. Norm weighed in a 17 plus pound blackmouth in the derby, his biggest blackmouth ever!

Last but not least, local angling legend Pete Nelson finishes off the event by singing the song "Mountain Dew" to tent full of over a thousand people. 

I can't say enough about this great event, which is for me also somewhat of a homecoming. I got my saltwater guiding career started in the San Juans in the mid-90's and learned so much from fishing around some truly outstanding fisherman. Fishing around people like Mike Dunnigan, the Aggergaards, the Lindermans, Larry Carpenter, Rod Nau, Kirk Hawley, and Pete Nelson, to name a few, can only make you a better fisherman. You can bet I'll be back again next year!