Austin Powers 3.0

Wednesday June 3rd AM

"...Gonna need about Tree Fiddy..."

Well, this banger of a fishing Season thus far has finally progressed into June, and many questions abound. Are these fish going to up and leave us soon? Is it possible that this spectacular King fishing we are experiencing in April and May simply continues on into June and these fish never leave? This has happened before. Only on a handful of occasions, but those years have something in common with this year, and that is there were a ton of fish in the system then, and there are a ton of fish in the system now!

Last weekend, Austin and I had decided to fish on Wednesday morning, as the weather looked awesome and he was available. This was also good for me because Fish On 4 Freedom was scheduled for Friday the 5th, and I was going to be using this outing as a little pre fishing expedition

Because we were in a full moon cycle, Austin and I decided to fish super early. Typically on full Moon days, the usual sunrise flurry one expects is either nonexistent or severely tampered down. My hope was that we would maybe hit a few fish in the dark, as they have a tendency to bite all night long with these full moons.

We set up in 110 foot in the 02s, on a slight NW troll with the plan being to gradually slide out until the fish gave us a reason not to.

The Crew was myself, Austin, and his buddy Luke. Now, I didn't tell those guys ahead of time, but previous reports, combined with heavy winds the previous couple of days, plus my own gut instinct had me thinking that if we could get ten bites, the morning would be a success.

Lines in at 4;20 AM. At 4;35 AM, my 5 Color goes. It's about a 5 pound king. Skunk is out and we have some reason to be optimistic. That reason slowly evaporated as the morning progressed. One here. one there. No particular patten or hot bait. It was plain and simply going to be a grind. And yet it wasn't horrible. We were still picking away and quite honestly we were likely going to get to our ten bites...

At 8 AM we were sitting on 6 for 8 and we had made it a little further North. That's when we made the decision to put it on a West. We were currently sitting in 150 foot and went on a due West troll. My 5 color goes. That one gets off, and it goes again. Then we rode from 180 until 340 with 3 bites on the West troll. Not horrible but not great. We hit 350 foot of water and everything starts happening. 5 color goes again. Followed by my 7 color. Austin quickly pulls his 200 and 300 coppers and replaces them with a 3 and 5 color leadcore. I pull my 250 Copper in exchange for a full core. His 3 Color goes trickling out. My 5 and 7 continue to fire. Just as quickly as we can reset lines, we have fish on them. The water was telling the whole story. Buggy with debris and cotton wood! Little bugs like gnats and small fly's biting at your ankles, with the occasional fish porpoise on top of the water! Literally everything you could ever ask for if you were looking for a good offshore program. We kept meaning to turn, but the fish just kept coming.

At 8:00 we were 6 for 8. At 9:45 we were 18 for 23 with 3 throwbacks. Mostly 4-7 pound kings with 2 steelhead, a lake trout, and one Adult King in the mix.

Fishing is like figuring out a puzzle, and it's exceptionally more difficult when you have to go find a new batch of fish. This is why I was the most proud of our efforts on this trip versus any other outing this year, and also why I had a celebratory Mimosa with the boys at Cafe 106 once we got in (for those of you that do not know, I hardly ever drink).

P.S.- If you didn't understand the South Park reference in my title of this blog, I am sorry

Happy Monday, and hope you have success if you plan on fishing!

I will post about yesterday's outing in my blog tomorrow

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