ZOG BLOG: Another dose of Sekiu hootenanny shindig yankitude?
POSTED Feb. 21, 2009 / 10:45 a.m.

SEKIU - Last February, March and April’s runs of wild steelhead were, at best, piss poor. Almost to the point of this angler considering hanging up the bent metal and swung feathers for good during cold climes.

This year, however, no such deal. The OP rivers - mainly the Sol Duc, Hoh and Bogachiel - have been lavishing in pretty decent numbers of steelhead. Good fishing bordering on excellent when conditions all line up. My last try took 12 minutes on the upper Sol Duc with a copper 2/5-ounce BC Steel to find a sublime 14-pound lightly colored male in the Riverside run.

God, I love the strike on a swung spoon!

The Presidents Day weekend was not kind to river anglers. Heavy rains all week put all streams wayyyyyy up and dirty. Saturday afternoon found me sitting on my hands, moping about brown water.
 
As heartwarming as the Back-To-The-Future steelheading has been this winter, I'm still just as jacked to get back to the first-class opportunities for feeder Chinook in the Strait of Juan DeFuca out of Sekiu.

Last year’s non-existent ironhead runs pushed me into the arms of another woman, so to speak.  I took Edgar to Sekiu to see if the days-of-yore blackmouth fishing was as good as yesteryear, just because there was nothing else to do. Turns out it was the best I’ve seen since the mid 80s, the heyday of Puget sound blackmouth fishing. Most ran 8 to 14 pounds, with a few larger ones hooked just often enough to double-check knots.

Would this year still feature hootenanny shindig yankitude? 

Opening Day was February 13, but gale-force winds kept all anglers away until Sunday. “Razor” Schick, Cousin Dickie and I turned the fully functional Death Star that is Edgar loose on the Chinook population. 

Eight a.m. sharp, Olsen’s Resort. Calm Straits greeted a swarm of anglers - all eight boats - all congested off The Caves.

We start just of the Caves in 130 feet, trolling with the current east to Kyadaka Point. The anticipation: B-R-U-T-A-L!

Sekiu blackmouth 101, Professor Zog Style
Last season’s stomach content of feeder kings showed two types of bait: sand lance and herring. Most herring were small, red label size. No wonder the number one bait up here is brined cutplug red-label herring. (See Tom Pollock’s fine brine recipe on line, it’s been lights out for me for years). Second is the Coho Killer. It just happens to mirror the size and shape of a sand lance. 

Troll the Coho Killer on 44 inches of 25-pound Maxima Ultragreen behind an 8-inch green/glow flasher, set 20 inches behind the ball. Best colors are chartreuse/UV; purple/UV, all glow and White Lightning. When stomachs of Sekiu salmon begin to show larger sandlance (6 to 9 inches), I’ll go to a double Coho Killer: two spoons put together with a No. 5 split ring.  

For the herring setup, two 3/0 black Gamakatsu hooks tied 5 inches apart on 5 feet of 15-pound Ultragreen. The leader is tied to a ball bearing swivel, 12 inches of 50-pound test Maxima Chamelion (very stiff) tied to another ball-bearing swivel. The ball-bearing swivels are there to prevent line twist, so very important when trolling herring.

Set the herring 22 feet behind the ball, place the clip 6 feet up on the cable. Off the ball, run a dummy flasher made up of a large snap swivel, 20 feet of 40-pound mono to a favorite 11-inch flasher. Your bait is back a bit from the flasher as salmon approach prey from below. The flasher now only attracts, it’s not in the way.

Rods, reels, lines? Dave Vedder’s 10 ½-foot, 8 to 12 Lamiglas X106 MC is money; very parabolic for use with downriggers, cushions the 15-pound Marine Green Maxima mainline just fine and shows off the fighting quality of the salmon without overpowering them. Make sure you choose a reel with a lot of capacity, as your lure/bait is over 100 feet down (plus a big blackie can smoke off a lot of line on top of that).

And now for the happy ending ...
More bait on the screen than I’ve ever seen. Marking salmon all over the water column. Three hours without a long stare from a salmon. With all the pent-up excitement over weeks of anticipation, the last thing we need is trolling practice.

It’s now 11 am, all the fellas in boats are shrugging shoulders on the pass, no nets flying in sight. We’ve been cruising over bait balls 40 feet deep and an eighth of a mile long. Dozens of sea birds whirling and diving. But no bites.

Blackmouth veterans know this: If nothing is happening in your chosen spot, do not be hesitant to pick up and move, try another area. Gazing across Clallam Bay, well lookie here, no one is off Slip Point. In seasons past, the bite has been so consistent off the Caves and Sekiu Point there was no reason to search elsewhere.

But I love Slip Point. It’s where I do most of my damage during summer king season. If you happen to see any of the old Dr. Te-Ho-Ke (sp) videos he’s done on Sekiu blackmouth, they were all filmed off Slip Point.

Pull ’em up, let’s try Slip.

(cue John William’s Superman theme)

One side, cut plug herring, the other 11-inch flasher/double Coho Killers, both set at 125 feet.

High tide is a half hour away.

Seen this here many times. The first two, three hours of daylight, zilch, then you throw a switch, bang bang bang, done. Usually just before high tide is when the bite turns on at Sekiu.

Starting our troll at Mussolini Rock, 130 feet of water. Heading east toward the green buoy, with the current. Dickie’s rod with the naked cut plug rips off the clip.

Seven pounds. Nice!

Two more drops with the herring, two ore fish in 15 minutes, all 7 to 8 pounds of Onthebarbecueus succulentis. Small for Sekiu feeder Chinook, but for day one, we’ll take it.

And fight. I forget sometimes how demonic blackmouth are when hooked.

All three salmon when autopsied featured clean, empty stomachs. Not normal for Sekiu feeder kings, more often than not they’re stuffed full of baitfish. Disappointing, as this is a great way to “match the hatch” for choosing baits/lures.

The other boats, how did they fare? Back at Olsen’s, after interrogating the WDFW checker, there were two other decent fish caught, a 7- and 9-pounder. Odd, all other anglers trolled some standard issue configuration of 11” flasher/hoochie/spoon - we were the only boat pulling bait.

Most caught nada.

Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Sekiu blackmouth are finicky creatures and although they will hit a flasher/spoon tandem occasionally, most of the time you need light line and high-quality cut-plug herring to score.

And so, it begins ...

Metal To The End.
-BH

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