Beauty day so out again. In complete contrast to Friday, when we did not encounter any pinks at all, today was a pink fest or pink infestation, depending on your point of view. Lines down at 7:15am at Muir with only two other boats (in complete contrast to the usual Otter traffic jam!) and in five minutes a pink. Rebait and 3 minutes later another pink. I could not get two lines in the water because a pink would hit the first one. In forty minutes we had four in the boat and released two. But we knew we would never get a chinook this way as every herring was being hit at once, so we gave up on our usual method and went to spoons with big single hooks.
Slowed everything down and not much happened then for a while. At around 10am I turned to see the side with the glow spoon pounding. I never saw to go, so when I hit it I was not surprised to miss it completely.
Tried herring again but immediately a pink hit again, so gave up on that. More boats at Muir by then but only saw pinks caught. Went out deeper to 150’ of water and fished at 100-125’ feet with the same spoons but all we got were several undersized little chinook.
After lunch at noon, and after the tide change, we tried herring one more time at the usual depths. Now the pinks had vanished and we trolled for an hour uninterrupted. We were the only boat at Muir by then. At 1:15pm I turned to see the rod had gone off unnoticed again. I guess attention wanders after 6 hours on the water!! I hit the D/R button and reeled quickly feeling nothing at first. Then I made contact and he was still there and he took off running. Sadly 10 seconds later he was gone.
We decided to call it after that and set out to troll back with the tide targeting pinks. As I was reeling in the herring on one rod, I had a hit almost at the surface. At first I thought it was a coho but it turned out to be a small hatchery chinook. It just went 6lbs and we might not have kept it but it was bleeding a lot so it was our consolation for a long day.
Fabulous hot calm day on the water though.