So-So Sekiu Trip 7/8-7/10

[t_dub]

3rd annual trip with my wife up there and we're still trying to figure out the patterns. did really good first year, pretty poor last year, and ok this year. nothing big, in fact everything was pretty small. kicked back LOTS of 20" shakers. weather was pretty snotty all three days, 3-4 swell with couple feet of wind chop thanks to the 15-20 mph westerlies. a big shout out to my wife who's 5 months pregnant and toughed out the snotty conditions without a peep.

first evening did pretty well. hooked 8 fish, kept 10# & 12# hatcheries, released a low teens native and sent some shakers back. both the keepers had big 'ol 5" prawns in their guts. never seen that before.

next morning, did the typical start shallow near the kelp beds then work our way our deeper as it got lighter. yielded a whopping two shakers and didn't see a whole lot of other action. talked to some folks at the dock who said lots of bait out 400' with kings and coho at 50'. once again nothing big. gave it a shot in the afternoon out deep with a full sun, find bait, set gear at 50' and fish on. kicked back lots of smallish native coho, one 15# native king and ended up keeping small hatchery coho and king. went out in the evening got blanked doing what we did the previous evening so we went out deeper and filled limits with small coho and kings. everything that day was stuffed with candlefish.

final morning, tried the shallow near the kelp bed thing hoping some kings moved in. whole lot of nothing but did end up hooking about a 50# halibut and found out it really sucks to get one of those things up from 125' on a knuckle buster and Shimano Convergence. moved out deep and trolled around until we found bait and worked the crap out of it (lowrance screenshot) until sorted through all the natives and filled our limits with small kings and coho. today they were filled with 6" herring???? roughly same location as yesterday where they were stuffed with candlefish

[Nelly]

So, SO?... Looks pretty solid from here!
Tell you what, Looking at my last trip to A7, A5 has been a great call!!!

[t_dub]

yeah, A7 sure has been disappointing for most so far this year. fingers crossed for A9 for me next tuesday (gotta work on the opener ). hoping all those reported nooks from A6 have made their way down and managed to get all their adipose fins clipped in the process.