It was an absolutely fantastic day fishing for Lingcod and Bottomfish on The Slammer charter boat out of Westport. I’m a little late in getting this post out, since the actual trip was on March 27th as things have been busy!
The charter boat captain showed up a few minutes after we got on the boat and we were off.
Everyone was in a great mood as The Slammer made its way out of the Marina and Harbor, deftly maneuvering, like it had done the trip thousands of times before.
As we made our way on a NW course, the view looking east was absolutely stunning. The color of the water in dim light with the blast of light emerging over the eastern horizon was epic.
The day was predicted to be about a 15-25 mph wind coming from the ENE and moving to ESE and laying down by the late afternoon.
While that’s a big wind speed number to be venturing out into the ocean with, the fact that it was coming from the E with limited fetch makes a huge huge difference.
High tide was around 6 am, so we were crossing the bar (around 6:30 am) well before max ebb and conditions were quite calm. Conditions got noticeably more bumpy the more we moved offshore as you would expect with an easterly breeze.
Along the way, we stopped much earlier than expected to look at the many migrating gray whales making their way north.
So cool to see the spouts all around us and some finning. Who knows how many there actually were, but it was a pretty cool experience nonetheless and felt like an absolute bonus treat that we didn’t expect.
It felt so strange to fish without staring at the electronics, so you really don’t have any sense of where the good fishing spot would be.
We just kind of stopped in the middle of somewhere and when the crew yelled to get our lines down, we blindly followed the directive (that’s why you hire the charter right?).
We dropped down to the bottom in 150 ft+ depth of water, came up several cranks, drop, rinse and repeat until we either hooked up or reached the end of our drift.
We were fishing previously frozen whole herring and were getting bites consistently until we had a limit of lingcod on the boat.
The bite is quite subtle when it’s happening. It’s almost like a small trout bite in that you kind of just felt a nibble that moved your rod tip.
If you look at the YouTube video, you can see the entire bite from start to finish. The instructions from the charter boat captain were quite clear: DO NOT SET THE HOOK.
This is because quite often a ling cod will just grab onto the bait and hold on all the way up the surface without even being hooked. Not only so, but what’s often going on underwater is the fish will first attack and stun the smaller prey with the first bite, and then within a few seconds take the entire thing fish in its mouth.
If you set the hook right away you are just ripping your bait out of the ling’s mouth and missing your opportunity.
Instead, the instructions were, to wait 3 seconds and then just start to reel. I followed that advice and was able to pull up 4 lings to help the boat limit. Most of the lings I pulled up were considered small, though I was still excited to get the fish onboard.
My last one had a bit more size and it was pulling line and putting up more of a fight. In general, it was pretty straightforward to get them to the boat.
After the lings, we moved on to seabass. For seabass, we anchored up and dropped jigs down to the bottom (or near) and reeled up quickly. We of course were using much lighter spinning tackle for the smaller fish.
And of course, one of the guys on the boat hooks not only a seabass, but a really nice ling decides to grab on to the seabass as well.
Now, this ling was never actually hooked. He was just holding on to the seabass the entire time.
The mouths on these fish are substantial. The seabass itself is a bit football shaped and maybe 6-8 inches in height and this ling has its mouth around the entire thing and rides it all the way to the surface.
Being in the stern of the boat, and the angler who hooked this fish was about mid-ship, I got a great view of this fish coming to just below the surface and sitting there not giving any ground.
Remember, we were using light tackle for seabass fishing, so there was almost no way to get it close enough to the boat to net it. Thankfully, the crew of The Slammer are incredibly skilled at what they do, and they let out some anchor line to allow the boat to move back a bit, and gain ground on the size-able ling that was just out of reach.
The next part was amazing. The deckhand told the angler to lift up and the deckhand got the net underneath the ling all in one quick moment.
As soon as the Ling’s head was out of the water he spit out the seabass, but was already netted at that exact moment. As it turned out, this Ling was the largest caught in several weeks, but merely half the size of the largest caught all year in 2018. Apparently, much bigger lings come out of the deep water fishery once that opens.
We had limits for everyone of both lings and rockfish by noon and headed back in. Overall, the trip was an amazing experience: The excellent table fare we were coming back with, the gray whale sightings, and of course the time on the water with good friends. Absolutely the best!
