Lingcod Fishing Neah Bay May 2022

Lingcod fishing during our May 2022 Neah Bay fishing was incredible and I caught the biggest lingcod of my life weighing in at 38 lbs!

If you’ve been following the blog, you know that lingcod and rockfish fishing have been absolutely fantastic for our crew, whether out of Westport or Sekiu / Neah Bay.

We decided to head back for one more trip this spring to see if we could bonk a few more lingcod and get in on the halibut fishing opener at the end of our trip. While the butt fishing was slow (except for all the true cod we caught! More on that in another post…), we experienced phenomenal bottom fishing and one of the first lingcod we caught was that 38 lb pictured above.

We really didn’t keep any small lingcod, they were all decent-sized. Unlike other fishing trips for bottom fish, our strategy was to completely ignore schools of rockfish and be content to pick up rockfish as bycatch. We went hard, hunting for big ling cod right from the get-go, and we moved to new areas, fishing structures not looking or caring about marks on the sonar.

And boy did it pay off! With the size of lingcod and probably half our limits of rockfish we still brought back 3x the meat as the previous trip where we limited on rockfish, but put smaller lings in the box (or avoided keeping the smaller ones, without enough time to find the bigs).

One of the crazier moments happened in my fish-box on the first day as well:

I keep some amount of water in my fish box and try to circulate it a bit throughout the trip based on how my boat is designed for this. There’s not really that much water in there…

This lingcod (probably about 15 lbs), decided to eat a decent-sized black rockfish as its last meal…I mean what other critter on God’s green earth does this kind of thing?

Can you imagine if these creatures lived on land or got any bigger? They are so aggressive and primal, which is partly why I love them!

Story on hooking and catching the 38 lb Lingcod

We arrived on the first day and launched out of Neah Bay at about noon, thinking we would get a few hours of fishing in and then head in and get checked in back at Sekiu at the wonderful Van Ripers Resort.

We immediately headed west, as we had decent marine conditions and wanted to maximize our time on the “outside” or west of Tatoosh.

We spent some time around Tatoosh fishing some popular structure we had fished before, which holds decent ling cod and rockfish populations, but we weren’t finding quality lingcod and mostly just smaller black rockfish which we released.

We moved to a new pinnacle I hadn’t fished before and started drifting in about 45 ft of water down to about 100 ft.

On the very first pass, I hooked up with something that absolutely hammered my 4 oz waterdog-colored lancer jig. I felt some incredibly strong head shakes, followed by dead weight that had me wondering at one point if I had just imagined the head shakes and I was really just hooked on the bottom!

I mean…I’ve been known to fight bottom for a bit, you know?

It took me some time to work the fish to the boat as this big ling was not cooperating, but also not really running or fighting much. I was telling my crew “Look guys, I’ve got something really big on my line…”

When this monster ling finally surfaced and my buddy Tim grabbed the gaff, promptly secured the fish, and put it on the deck, complete pandemonium ensued!

Tim accidentally stepped on my wash-down hose (he’s a firefighter so this is kind of his thing…) as he put this mammoth lingcod in the boat, he sent water spraying up into the air and drenching us on the way down.

We had three different rods tangled up just from not paying attention while we yelled, high-fived, and generally freaked out with the size of this lingcod!

We took a variety of photos and then proceeded to beat the hell out of this pinnacle and in the process put over 100 lbs of lingcod and rockfish in the fish box.

The next day, marine conditions were a bit sportier, so we stayed inside for a bit, but then decided to poke our noses out again and had another slaughter fest on our new favorite no-name pinnacle!

Looking for more ideas and tips to get into incredible lingcod on the Washington coast and the Puget Sound? Take a look at our comprehensive guide to fishing for Lingcod in Washington. Also, check out a complete guide to fishing for lingcod anywhere!

A few random thoughts on lingcod and rockfish processing…

It’s important to have the right knife when processing your catch at the end of the day. Black rockfish scales are like concrete armor and Lingcod skin can be really tough to get off without butchering your nice fillet.

The Dalstrong fillet knife below comes razor sharp and holds an edge after significant processing. Filleting black rockfish was a joy and it made quick work of lingcod and getting skin off of lingcod later on!

The technique of removing the skin is super important. You want to get started on the tail end and really pull the skin tight. The idea is to hold a sharp knife at an even angle and just pull the skin with the fillet attached through the knife’s edge while working the knife up and down (especially on a larger fillet). As you can see from the pic above, the result is no meat wasted and a beautiful fillet of lingcod.

Final thoughts

The season on Lingcod goes all through the summer for most marine areas (MA 1-4 usually), and a spot that seems to not be holding quality lings or appears to be “fished out” will get new lingcod later in the season, so maybe give it a whirl and keep at it when everyone is out chasing salmon.

Of course, a single trip like the one described here will leave you a year’s worth of whitefish supply, so maybe salmon IS next up on the agenda!