Things seem to be changing quickly in terms of recreational opportunities as the state shuts down.
The city of Westport recently shut down all hotels, vacation rentals, and ways for non-residents to stay in an effort to keep people away and stop the spread.
This whole virus mess will pass. When it does, making a trip to Westport for bottom fishing is something you should strongly consider. This whole virus mess will pass. When it does, making a trip to Westport for bottom fishing is something you should strongly consider.
For all of the information about how to have a great fishing trip and how to safely go over the Westport bar and back, you need to checkout our comprehensive guide to Westport Bottom Fishing.
We left the boat launch and marina at about 7:30 am. We started off by dropping 2 crab pots in 40 ft of water just off of the south jetty.
The buoy at the entrance of Grays Harbor said that the conditions were 3 ft waves at 5 seconds with almost no wind. The tidal currents were in the last 2 hours of the flood tide and switching over to the ebb.
We had considered running all the way to Sonora Reef, but the swells were coming from a NW direction and the tighter spacing (every 5 seconds), prevented us from going more than 15 mph without slamming off the back of every 3rd wave or so. This would have made for a really long run north.
Instead, we settled for a closer rock pile we found on our charts. We made about 10 passes over that area over 5-6 hours and collected 21 sea bass and 6 ling cod. At around 11 am or noonish, we started noticing the swells were getting much larger, but still flat calm conditions with little to no wind.
We decided to head in towards the end of the ebb. The waves were 4.6 ft at 8 seconds as we went back over the bar. We pulled our pots and found 2 keeper Dungeness crab which is always a great bonus to the trip.
I don’t know about you all, but with the recent announcement by WDFW that all recreational fishing in the State of Washington is now closed…I’m gonna go nuts with fishing when it opens back up. Westport bottom fishing is going to be very high on my list of fisheries to experience again.
