Took my daughter out for the late afternoon and night bite today. Stayed away from the crazy amount of boats crammed into small tight areas all around the mouth at the south arm. We went north a bit in between both arms. Only two other boats by us. We were out between 200-350' of water fishing when we first got out there. Riggers at 150' and 130' cause that's where the bait and fish were showing. We hit one at 150 right away but lost it right at the net. Spit the hook with a back flip. That one was on a spoon. About 15 minutes later another one hit on the 130' line. A screamer nice sized fish but never saw it. It also spit the hook. Daughter was thinking she was doing something wrong. I said nope you're not you are doing everything perfectly. That second fish was on a Herring Strip. We hit no other fish for an hour or so and then noticed most of the bait and fish marks were up higher now so we brought our lines up and changed up the spoon to a plug and the Herring to a chovy with a bit smaller hooks on the bait. Our first tack through the bait ball the 88' rod when off and popped itself off the rigger. Daughter grabbed the rod and didn't have to set the hook. Fish was already peeling out line like crazy. She quickly backed of the drag cause her rod was bent down on top of the motor and we both thought the rod was gonna break over it. Very proud of her for being quick on that cause I lost her a big fish on another outing we had by not telling her to back the drag off. I told her this fish is a good size fish. It was running so far behind the boat and there was plenty of drag on it. No boats close to us so I told her to keep the rod up high and keep it tight while I got the other line/rigger in and did a circle back with the boat towards where the fish was running. We gained a bunch of line back and the fish started bolting towards the boat. She was reeling as fast as she could but there was a bit of slack in the line. I backed the boat up a bit to help her gain up the slack in the line. As soon as she caught up to it the rod bent right over and the fish did another big run to the surface and broke the water twice. Now we knew this was a good sized fish for sure. I thought it might be a Tyee. She had that fish close to the net twice but it said nope and gave two more deep runs down. On the third fight up to the surface again it looked like it finally had enough. She did a great job leading the fish to the net and dropping lot's of slack as it came into the net. As soon as it was in the boat I thought man this fish is close to a Tyee but I wasn't sure. I didn't want her to be disappointing if it wasn't a Tyee so I didn't say it might be to her. So we got the scale out and it hung 26.6 I told her she did an amazing job and she couldn't stop smiling. No complaints of arms hurting or anything. She even knew to get the line back out as quick as possible as the bite was coming on and we were in the right zone. That fish was on a chovy so I suggested to her we swap the plug out for another chovy on that line. She said no she wanted to keep a different lure on that side of the boat. This was a day for her so I let her pick all the baits/lures, depths of riggers etc. I just made suggestions to her.
So we gathered ourselves, got the lines back out and went back to find the bait balls again and fish marks we were seeing. We found the marks and put the lines at the same depths. About 20 minutes later a fish hits the 66' line. My daughter grabbed the rod, set the hook and the fish took off for a couple decent runs but it was a lot smaller than the other one. This one hit the plug. (she was right keeping it on that line
) This smaller fish was still a kerfuffle as the rigger wouldn't come up. She was fighting the fish and the motor on the rigger was humming but the belt wouldn't turn. So I'm scrambling to get the rigger up by hand wondering why the F isn't it working. I didn't want the fish to get wrapped up in that rigger cable. Thankfully the fish was a smaller one and she forced it to go to the other side of the boat where I netted it for her. Turned out the rigger electrical in the female fitting was shorting out. Took it apart and got that working again. That fish was a bit over 12 lbs.
She was all tagged out after that fish and it was gonna be dark soon so we packed er up and headed back in. She kept smiling about that big fish. Her biggest so far. Treated her to a sushi feast on the way home to celebrate a great day together.
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