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Westport Bar Crossing Salmon Fishing 2024
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Sep 16, 2024
I went over the bar on a nice day at Westport, but I went on max ebb with about a 5 ft swell every 8 seconds. In this video I show you why you shouldn't cross the bar near max ebb, explaining the dynamics that makes this sort of thing dangerous or at least uncomfortable. The payoff for us was quick limits on quality chinook and coho including a chinook weighing 27 lbs and a coho close to 10 lbs! This max ebb crossing was only doable because of a manageable swell height and very little wind combined with my 23 ft north river's ability to handle it fairly well. Things can be very different with worse conditions! Here are some helpful links you can use to trip plan and learn about marine weather safety: https://pnwbestlife.com/marine-weather-safety/ https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=wptw1 https://marine.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-124.62184801697728&lat=47.00937383311603 https://a.atmos.uw.edu/data/marine_report.html
View Video Transcript
0:00
A little while ago I had a request to show footage of going over the Westport bar
0:09
and talk about what that looks like, you know, how to be safe doing that
0:14
Definitely lumpy. Yeah, it's got a little long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
0:25
I think like, uh, yeah, come right off the back of that
0:32
Yeah, we'll be angry this morning. Yep. That's what you've got when you get the physics of, uh, water rushing back into, into swell
0:44
We went over the bar in late July to try to get some good footage as well as take part in just the incredible Westport salmon fishing that was available
0:55
And I went over the bar at, you know, what you might say is the wrong time, all in the name of bringing you this important footage
1:05
I've already done a video on going over the Westport bar on a small boat
1:09
I've got an article on P&W BestLife.com about marine weather safety that if you're really interested in being educated on these topics, you should go check out
1:18
So this will be a little bit more of a brief overview, but I still want to introduce a few of the really important topics
1:24
One of them just being basics about waves, right? So waves that we encounter in the ocean wherever are measured both by their height and by their duration
1:38
So five feet at eight seconds means you have a five foot waved measured from the base to the top
1:46
and that you're going to encounter every eight seconds. If you weren't moving, if you were speeding into the wave, obviously you will encounter
1:54
counter them more often than eight seconds. Now, what's interesting about a bar, and it doesn't have to be a river bar, it could be any
2:01
point of land where the sea floor rises over a short distance, and that effect, the physics
2:09
of that effect, it creates steeper, more unstable wave action that you have to contend with
2:16
So in the case of a river bar, you've got to be really careful when you go across the bar
2:21
specifically around the title current, what the title currents are doing. And what most people will tell you is that you want to avoid going over a river bar during an ebb current Why is that Well swell which is created by offshore flow is usually coming from the opposite of the direction that an ebbing tidal current is coming from
2:44
So from the river mouth, you have the ebb current and you have the river flow coming from that mouth against, in the case of Westport, against a west swell that's predominantly
2:56
Dominantly west might be northwest, might be southwest, you're never going to have an east flow
3:01
But it really matters how strong the ebb current is, and it really matters how high the west swell is
3:07
In the worst case scenario, you have very high swell that's stacked close together, and you have really strong ebb current that is, think of it as almost like carving out the swell, making it more steep and more unstable, as you see kind of in these pictures here
3:26
In a flood current with the same swell, it's going to be more lumpy, but it's not going to be as unstable and steep as in an eb current
3:34
So when you're looking at a marine forecast, like you'll see here from NOAA, links in the description on all this stuff that I've been talking about in these forecasts
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You could see stuff like we went over the bar Wednesday and predicted a northwest win of five knots
3:49
That's not a big deal. Ideal time to go over the bar, just be out in the ocean period
3:54
that's not a problem rising to 10 to 15 in the afternoon a lot of times you get an afternoon wind
4:01
that kicks up and makes things more difficult so i usually like to be on the water first thing
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get the fishing done get out of there before that higher wind kicks up it said c's three to five
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feet wave detail west five at eight seconds that's probably about what we experienced maybe a little
4:19
closer to four um but this matters for the bar you on the bar you're on the bar you're
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not necessarily going to experience 5 feet at 8 seconds, as you'll see in this video
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The other really important piece of information we want to know is, what are the currents doing
4:33
I have navionics on my phone, on my iPad, on my raymarine unit
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Like, I've got it in three different places. And one of the things you can do in navionics is you can look on one of these current stations
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You can look at the predicted current. You could also look at the tides. In the morning, we were supposed to have a big low tide
4:51
And I was looking at launching a little bit after. the peak ebb knowing that I would still essentially be in that peak ebb windows You look at this picture Peak ebb was at 6 around 6 and 2 knots
5:10
And then at 7.30, it was at 2.3 knots. So really no difference
5:15
We're still in the peak ebb window. I think I launched around seven
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I wanted to get the boat in the water before low, low tide. But it meant I was either going to be hanging out in the harbor for a while, or I was going
5:27
be going over the bar near max ed because that afternoon wind was kicking up i said look let's just
5:32
let's let's go full send on this uh i've got a boat that can handle the conditions four to five foot
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swell but uh i don't know that i would want to do much more than that not from a safety standpoint
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although there is that factor but just from a pure um i don't know comfort factor it was it was uncomfortable
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at times oh boy I started my learning curve last year watching YouTube videos and launched
6:08
Holy God, dude. I think I'm kind of done with this bar. What do you guys think
6:13
Yeah, I haven't seen it like this is a lot. I'm done being on the bar
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I'm ready for some traveling ocean. So generally, you want to avoid max that going hour later
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or go on the flood current or be out in the ocean during max ebb already and you know and come
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back after that these are things that you should consider when planning a bar crossing either coming in
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or or going out you're going to have to cross that bar and you want to make sure your conditions are
6:48
are safe they're right in the case of going out essentially at a max ebb a 2.3 2.4 knot ebb current
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into five foot swell, I would say we experienced swell wave conditions that were more like
7:04
six feet at five seconds, six feet at six seconds, somewhere more like a square Cs. And we experienced them
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for a couple miles and in some cases the swells were so steep that we just fell off the back
7:21
side of them even when trying to really manage our speed. You know, whoa
7:27
Oh shit. That I did not expect. Although I was looking at the video I was probably trying to go a little too fast over some of the sections thinking I could power through it But some of the waves were just really steep and that was probably a bad idea
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And I'd go a little slower in the future. But the payoff is outstanding
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Here you can see we're landing a 27-pound schnook and my buddy caught
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Oh, he's down there. All right, flip, flip, foot, foot, foot, foot
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Oh, shoot. Oh, I got him, he's a pig. Nice. Nice. Nice
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That's what we came for. That's right there. That's what we came for
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And then it just grinds on them. Our total catch for the day for the three of us, we each got a Chinook, we each got a Coho, several of the coho, close to 10 pounds
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The other two Chinook were 14 and 15 pounds. It can be incredible fishing, but you got to be smart, you got to be wise when it comes to marine weather forecast
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and you've got to know the capabilities of yourself as a boat captain, as well as the capabilities of your boat
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and I can't supply that information for you. But hopefully this video gives you some idea of what it looks like in these different conditions
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and what to look for to make your own trip plans. You can always reach out to me through the YouTube comments, Instagram, at Pacific NW BestLife
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email, Kyle at p.nwbestlife.com. I respond to emails, especially questions about marine weather, forecast, trip planning
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and I'll be happy to try to help you out if I can
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And good luck out there. Stay safe. Don't forget to hit the like button. Subscribe if you're not already
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Subscribe. You're already subscribed, right? Of course. Of course you are. So see you out there
9:36
First time I did this with my jet boat, going over it, I had a cooler on the bow
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Big mistake. The cooler eventually wound its way right up to my windshield
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blocking my wipers from moving. Oh, no. And it was like, oh, that was not..
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It's funny the way, like, little details can just screw you up
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You don't even realize it
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