We went out in a friends boat on the bank this afternoon/evening. Shortly after dropping the gear I found out that one of my fishing partners has never actually landed a salmon. It was my first time fishing with him, but he has been out a few times with others and had salmon on but always lost em. I decided that if my rod hit, I would pass it off to him and see if I could coach him in a salmon. Well about 45 minutes in my rod hits, I bring in the slack and get the drag set on the lighter side and get him on the rod. When I handed him the rod, the fish was running, and he went to grab the spinning reel, but I made sure he kept his fingers off that reel until the fish finished. The fight was a little back and forth but I didn't want him to rush the fish in, but then I saw a seal about 100 ft off our stern. We swung the boat around and I had him get that fish close before the seal started honing in on our fish. We snuck the fish into the net a little premature but better than losing his chance at popping his salmon cherry. A nice 8lb hatchery and it was great to see his excitement.
The flood picked up and kept pushing us off the bank so it was tough to keep the gear down. After a few tacks, we headed home but first pulling our trap with 4 nice dungies. Nice night on the water.
OH, one more thing that we saw (almost ran over actually) was 2 guys in their 20's swimming from I'm guessing the beach by Odgen breakwater to the brotchie ledge light marker. Yeah, they were swimming out there. In wetsuits and they were on their way out to the light at 7:30. They were pretty hard to see with the little bit of chop, and being in hooded black wetsuits. When we spotted them, we were about 50 ft out. We stopped right away and thought that maybe they were in trouble. They said they were all good. I asked if they thought the commercial fishing boat that was motoring by on the inside of them could see them. They said they thought they were fine and kept waving us on. Really stupid idea to be swimming in this highly used traffic area. Especially with big boats all around. Just shake my head at that ****.