F
Fishnsleep
We began Thursday by heading south, down to Three Arches, about 9 miles from Garibaldi. My friend Jim and I fished at various depths on the reefs, from about 90’ to 160’. It was a tough bite, but we did manage to get our limit of 4 ling cod and only 4 rockfish. We also lost a lot of gear on the snaggy, rocky bottom, which happens, this day just seemed like it was excessive, lol. One thing I knew for sure, Friday we were not going South.
Friday, we ventured north, off of Manzanita, where there are some nice reefs to fish, if you can locate them. I have the Navionics chip in my GPS unit, which shows the bottom structure very well. The ling cod were biting, and there were some big ones in the mix. We got our ling cod limits on these reefs Friday and Saturday in a fairly short amount of time. The bottom fish bite was slow here as well, but we did manage a few each day. I was amazed at the ebb chop we encountered on returning. The tide swings were not that great, but the crossings were not calm on any of the days. You have to make sure and monitor the conditions, or you could be “stuck” outside waiting for the bar to calm down. The Coast Guard updates bar conditions on a regular basis.
Getting ready to head back down tomorrow, May 17, and repeat the process. Until the northern spot stops producing, that will be where we are headed. The crabbing has been slow, but appears to be picking back up. While fishing Friday, we saw lots of very very small crab floating, less then the size of a dime. Some of the sea bass we caught also had these crabs in their throats.