Having a two fish limit for the month of June was just awesome!
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Jeff, Chris, Mike, and Jim with a days limit of kings from early June.
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I left the Cannon's on the boat for the first two weeks of June and we tore up the kings pretty good on the troll gear. Most days we would mooch and troll, but overall we caught a crapload of kings trolling.
Hooking a lot of fish every day really lets you figure out what works and what doesn't. Most of the areas I was fishing had sandy bottom with lots of candlefish and matching the hatch was the name of the game. You'd be surprised how few fish we hooked on a whole herring in these areas...it was hardly worth it to even run a whole herring on the third rigger. Switch the third rigger over to a smaller presentation, however, and it was game on!
On the side riggers I ran a variety of flasher/hoochie combos and a couple of them really shined. The Luhr Jensen Green Crush (aka Mountain Dew) outfished the other flashers by about 2 or 3 to 1. Behind it I either trolled a green splatterback glow hooch, 039R gold star hooch, or an Ace Hi Fly needlefish in green or blue splatterback.
After the sea lions took most of our hoochies one day I tossed on a blue needlefish Ace Hi Fly and the kings couldn't leave it alone. The other flasher that has become a star performer is a green glow Q Cove breakaway flasher. I don't know the name of this particular one but it has glow on one side and prism tape on the other...it's a good one!
Here's the Green Crush with an 039R that accounted for a bunch of kings. I've been running 50 pound Seaguar Flourocarbon and a 31 inch leaders that give the hoochie plenty of action.
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We were catching the usual assortment of small chicken halibut until around the third week of June when some nicer halibut started pushing in. Myself and the rest of the guys have had quite a few since then that we've had to release. We can keep halibut under 44 inches or over 76 inches. Kim and I have both released several big mamma's in the 100 to 150 pound class and some other nice fish in the 50 to 80 pound range.
Here's a nice chicken-but that Terry picked up with Capt. Kim on the Sea Hunt. If we can find some of these every day we're happy campers!
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And the sea lions have been nothing but a nuisance this summer....even chomping on halibut for crying out loud. Ug....
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Ever since the tsunami in Japan there's been a ton of Japanese floats bobbing around off the coast here but nearly all of them are either modern plastic or metal floats. A little over a week ago I spotted this as we were trying to get to the halibut grounds in some crappy seas. My eyes about popped out of my head when this Japanese glass float appeared off in the distance
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Myself and the rest of the gang are taking a few days off around the 4th to service the boats, celebrate, spend a little time with our families, and rest up for the next two months of non-stop fishing. There's been some big kings on the coast and I think the wife and I are going to head out this afternoon to try to hook up with one of them...kind hard to stay in town you know. I have to pick up a mechanic off one of the troll tenders and bring him back to town so we might as well go fishing while we're out there
