Port Renfrew Reports 2015

As the title says lets hear your reports. Might as well start this thread off with a rumor as it is past 10 am and in Renfrew if you haven't heard one by that time it is time to start one Bud and Rex are supposedly gone

 

Was out there Tuesday;just checking not fishing,nothing going on...mostly workmen working...

 

Dont you ever work, hey Sammy next time you are out stop by the property in JR, first left out of JR after the hill to Renfrew, lot #3 ocean front, there is a trailer and camper on it and there should be a big bjesus hole dug by then

 

Little balls, you sure like to stir the pot don't you. Big balls says hello and is looking forward to another season out in PR.

 

Ha ha Bigballs good to hear from you. Well it seems i am always part of some Renfrew rumor look forward to seeing you!

 

Fish are absent on this report...any fillers from Hawaii...

 

Beer is cold, lots of young ptang and not many canuck fans so pretty good all around

 

don't be hording all of the young ptang,,

 

Fished for Hali today. 4 hrs on anchor. Only one to the boat about 20lbs. That's it. Few other boats out and weather was great for a March day. Fish came on salmon bellies.

 

Closer to the Bay or further west?

 

Anybody been out to Renfew and wanna chat about it? Thinking of heading up there with the wife for a weekend.

 

Big ebbing tides last week made fishing really tough on the Bank. Took us three hours to get first salmon, then scratched out another four chinook to 20 pounds and a hatchery coho on six-inch G-Force spoons before going hali fishing. Spent two more hours on anchor before halls hit during last hour limiting out on some nice slabs between 25 and 35 pounds.

If tides moderate next week, more fish will sit on the Bank. Heard a few fish were taken along the Beach.

 

Anyone catching any fish within range of a 16' boat? I'm headed out that way in week and was hoping to hear there might be some fish a little closer than swiftsure. Cheers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

As promised - my report from this weekend at Swiftsure:

I dragged the boat out to Neah Bay on Friday and got set up for an early morning departure to Swiftsure bank on Sat. An outgoing tide made the end of the strait a little lumpy. Nothing too bad, but short frequency, 2-4' washing machine like conditions near the end of the strait were encountered. We hit the bank by 6AM. I was on the US side of the line all day on Sat. and we boated 24 springs to find 4 worth keeping. Nothing too huge, the ones we kept were between 10 and 14lbs. All cut bright red. Near the mid afternoon slack, the bite really picked up and that's when we got most of our hits. We fished a green and white 6" tomic plug on one side and the iron needle spoon (pearlescent glow) on the other. Both produced well. In the afternoon while just SSW of J buoy, we trolled up 3 hali on the plug. All were really nice fish, probably 20,30 and 35lbs. All were released as the American quota was gone in the 4 days it was open in May. The hali took a bit longer to land on the 10.5' G. Loomis salmon rod!

Sunday the plan was to fish the early AM slack on the Canadian side in the hopes of picking up a hali or two where and when we could keep them. On the way out, I passed the largest group of humpback whales I've ever encountered. At one time, I counted at least a dozen spouts in the air simultaneously but there were more whales present than that. Probably at least 15. All where working bait on the NE end of the bank. I probably should have stopped there and just fished salmon as I likely would have been done by 8AM. However, we were on a mission for hali and the slack wouldn't last long. So we proceeded to just N of J buoy just outside the west end of the closure. We started jigging with gibbs cod jigs but I quickly switched one rod over to a spreader bar with some octopus and herring on it. As luck would have it, we couldn't find a hali in the 1-2 hours we had before the current started moving again. So we tried to troll up a couple using the same tactics as the day before but on the other side of the line - no luck. Around 11AM after 5 solid hours of fishing and 3 hours of trolling, we had boated and released one modest size spring. There appeared to be a lot more bird and whale activity on the American side of the line. So at that point, I decided we might as well fish the American side and at least pick up our salmon. We eventually picked up our 4 springs but I did wind up keeping one smaller than I'd like just to be finished. I didn't get a hit on the iron needle spoon on Sun, but I did get several fish on a UV/mirror flasher + Olympic Tackle white squid imitation. Most of the fish were coughing up 2-4 inch squid when they hit the deck. All fish were caught with 180-300' out on the cable and most were in the 220-250' range. I fished a bit higher up but was catching more coho than springs above 180'

I hit the dock back at Neah Bay by about 2:30 and made it on the road around 4:30 after cleaning up everything, vacuum packing the fish (we're allowed to do that in nice individual portions on our side of the line). Made it home a little after 8:30. All-in-all, it was a pretty good father's day weekend.

 

2nd days of fishing today 4 nice springs in the box gonna hit the bank tomorow hopefully we will get into em.
i will try and give an update tomorow wifi is a little spotty

 

Swiftsure bank continues to fish well. We hit it twice in the past week (before the winds and swells kicked up a bit). Each day we limited on decent, but not large, springs. Tomic plugs or flashers and hootchies both work fine. 180-220' on the cable has been quite reliable. We've fished deeper (250-270' on the cable) but got fewer hits deeper. This past Tues we made a run out to US Blue Dot. The fishing was a bit slower there but the springs were much bigger. Similar depths and gear to what we used at Swiftsure. We took 8 springs at Blue Dot with 5 in the upper teens, a couple around 12 and 1 around 8lbs.

 

Got home today from renfew after 5 days of fishing and had an incredible trip. I love that town and leaving is always hard. (no cel phones is definitely a plus). Weather was unreal and as flat as that part of the ocean gets every day. 3 guys took our limit of springs 25,25,24,22,22,20,20 and the rest in high teens. We kept a 15 to just fill our limit. Never did make it out to the bank as we didnt need to. We released alot of smaller fish along the way. All the spots along the beach produced for us. We had an incredible double at walbran of 25 and 22 lb springs in 50 feet of water the fish were instantly on the surface and unhappy! Then another double at camper yesterday that happened as i was clearing my side because buddys rod was pealing the fish hit on the way up. Both fish were high teens and fought like crazy. We Had a great day at cullite as well and also had a few fish at east point. Bait was the goto for us although we did have a couple on the coho killer. We were unsuccessful the one day we went out for hali way out off carmanah but a humpback seemed angry at us and breached 4 times with the last one inside the anchor buoy close enough to splash the boat. It smacked its tail and its head on the water during this then did a couple turns off the bow and then just left. It was pretty crazy. I think we were to in awe of it to be afraid then it was over. Killer trip and cant wait to go back!!!

 

Nice report Black Dog! We went Saturday and fished the beach early for about an hour with only shaker springs. We picked up and took 18 feet of aluminum and 4 of us out to the bank. Trails End and a half dozen other boats pounded past us on a rough run out but were able to show us the tac. 30 seconds for our first hit and had 13 fish in the boat by 11am. Nothing large but easy to bbq. Hootchies and a large copper/chrome spoon were our producing lures at 160 feet. Saw a ton of orcas on the way in and a couple keeper crab in the trap that hadn't been raided by the otter?

Great day on the water.

 

Quick note on Renfrew crabbing -- I've fished there for years but finally got around to dropping a crab pot on the way out. Came back a few hours later and found that someone had pulled it up and clipped the cage in 5 spots rendering it useless (of course the bait was gone and no crabs). Talked to a few people on shore and heard this was a common occurrence there. Who the heck is doing this? It's one thing to pull a pot and steal crab, but it's a whole other thing to then clip the trap up so badly it's useless. In case anyone was wondering...we made sure not to drop our pot close to any of the others.

 

King fishing out of Neah Bay on the bank and elsewhere was nothing short of spectacular last week. I was out for several days and we limited pretty much every day we fished. Swiftsure Bank has been stupid easy. The springs there are for the most part modest size - 6-12lb averaging around 8 but there are some larger ones mixed in. This is the biggest one I took off Swiftsure. It's just over 20# and hit on Nog's Iron needle spoon in a pearlescent glow pattern. I ran it at 220' of cable on the rigger with no flasher or dummy flasher.




I also had great luck with a very large green hootchie with the pirate's den LED inside 24" behind a red/glow "oil slick" flasher. Here's 7 of 8 fish we took off of Blue Dot (about 30miles WSW of Tatoosh island. The larger ones are upper teens, the smallest one is maybe 8lbs. We caught most of these at 180-220' on the rigger in about 320' of water.


Yesterday I had some time and fuel on my hands so I did a little tuna exploring. No joy on the tuna but I didn't work that hard at it. On my return, the fog in the strait was colored yellow/brown from the fires burning up your way on VCI. Hopefully all on this board and their families are fine and the fires get put out/go out soon.