Ferry Races and Saltwater Coho!
by
AJFishDude, October 10, 2014
If you have ever fished for Coho in any of the northern Puget Sound rivers, then you know that they can be an incredibly finicky and ridiculously lockjawed bunch of fish. Even though I have tried at least a dozen times to catch Coho out of northern rivers such as the Skagit, Stillaguamish and Snohomish, those enigmatic fish are still holding out on me.
If I were Captain Ahab, they would be my white whale.
Make no mistake, I have caught Coho, but only when I was fishing for them in the salt water or out of southern Puget Sound rivers.
As it would so happen, this is right about the time of year in which there should be an all out flood of Coho coming back to our northern rivers, and to be expected, I have already made no less than four trips out to the Skagit, the Stilly and the Snoho combined in search of some scrappy hook nosed Coho. I regret to say that as per usual, the fish are still not cooperating.
Having had enough of that riverside mess and not wanting to waste the valuable and oh-so-short in supply Saturday morning fishing hours, I made a tactical decision to abandon the rivers for another day and head out to the west side of Whidbey Island to jig the salt. I have had pretty good success out there for the Coho this year; regularly hooking and landing chrome bright specimens as they head down the fish version of I-5 that runs along the west side of the island.
Seeing as I live on the mainland, my options for reaching my favorite saltwater Coho fishing grounds are limited. I can either pay the $20 fee and ride the ferry out to the island, or I can drive all the way up and around through Deception Pass. Bush Point, the spot I like to fish on the island, is fairly close to the ferry landing at Clinton on the south end of the island. For those who don't know, Whidbey is a very long and skinny island oriented north-south in the middle of Puget Sound. Deception Pass, the only location to drive onto the island, is located at the extreme north end, meaning that I would add hours and a lot of unnecessary miles driven if I were to go up and around that way. So I have always opted to pay ferryman (or woman) and enjoy the brief 20 minute ride out to the island.
On this particular morning, my wife and I had hauled ourselves out of bed at 5:15am, quickly got some food, loaded the car with our gear, and headed out to catch the 6:00am ferry out of Mukilteo. After arriving at the dock and boarding the mighty Kittitas, we soon felt the rumble of the engines and the shudder of the deck plating as the vessel slid out of Mukilteo and into the waters of Possession Sound.
Shortly after our departure I told my wife that I wanted to go look over the deck railing for a few minutes. So coffee in hand, I left the car and headed over to see what there was to see out on the face of the pre-dawn water. No sooner had I reached the railing and looked to my left (north west), when I saw a fast moving red light bobbing along out in front of the ferry on a course perpendicular to and preparing to intersect our own. Knowing that the saltwater Coho season is still going strong, the Mukilteo boat launch is only a few miles to the north and prime Coho trolling waters are located to the south of the Mukilteo ferry dock, I immediately assumed that what I was looking at had to be a small private fishing boat heading south for the morning bite.
As I continued watching the fishing boat on its intersecting course I started thinking to myself that they were cutting it closer than I would probably want to with a ferry. A 328' ferry vs. an 18' Smokercraft? 5000hp vs. maybe 50 or 60? Those little boats can definitely move quick, but the ferries aren't slouches either.
That first boat made it past with a decent amount of room to spare, but it wasn't long before a second boat appeared, heading in the same direction as the first. This time as the smaller boat was preparing to be run over by the mighty Kittitas, the ferry crew turned on a spotlight and briefly lit up the smaller boat before pointing the light into the water next to the boat, but not directly on it; presumably a visual signal from the elephant to the mouse saying, "I see you there." Well, that boat made it by as well, but obviously not without some attention from the sailors up top.
Throughout this whole experience I kept thinking to myself, in all of my glory as the captain of a 9' inflatable, "why not just alter course and go behind the ferry? Sure, there would be a wake to deal with, but come on, it would add maybe one or two minutes total to your trip." And sure enough, I looked to my right and low and behold I saw three green lights darting past us behind the ferry; boats that had opted to not cheat death and rather just go through the wake.
As it would happen, I looked to my left again and what did I see but another private fishing boat getting set to square off with the Washington State Ferry system. Unfortunately, this boat underestimated the the 5,000 ponies mustered by the twin diesels 'under the hood' of the Kittitas. The ferry crew knew what was up, or more accurately didn't know what was up with that little boat, but were on top of it right away.
At this particular point in our voyage we had to make a slight turn to port (left) in order to stay on course for the Clinton ferry landing. This was not advantageous for the fishing boat, seeing as our course alteration had brought their course more in line with our own. In other words, that boat was going to really have to gun it now if they wanted to pass in front of the ferry. As I stood there at the deck railing watching all of this unfold I could immediately tell that this third attempted crossing was going to be bad. The ferry crew knew that as well and wasted no time in lighting up the smaller boat and leaving the spotlight on it.
After seeing the spotlight go on I thought, "surely they will alter course," but they didn't. If Captain Kirk had been in command of that fishing boat, this would have been the point at which he would have called Scotty down in engineering and told him to "give it all we've got," to which Scotty's reply would have been, "she can't take anymore sir, the warp core is ready to breach!"
Sure enough, Captain Kirk and all 18' (or so) of his mighty Enterprise didn't alter course. At this point the Kittitas responded with five bursts from its horn, the aural maritime signal for, "we have no clue what you are doing, but if you keep it up someone is going to die." It seems that at this point the good captain of the fishing boat finally got some sense into his head and began to slow down. Now comes the best part.
Rather than slowing down and altering course to avoid a collision, the fishing boat slowed down and stayed their present course. By this point, they were probably 40 yards off the starboard bow of the Kittitas and maybe 75 yards in front. Without being onboard the ferry it is somewhat difficult to describe what that means, but basically it meant that the fishing boat was now doing just about the best job that it could of actually trying to get hit by the ferry. Not only did they slow down and not alter course, but they then proceeded to mosey on across the bow of the ferry at their slower speed.
It was one those moments where you sit there watching something, your jaw drops (figuratively or literally) and you think to yourself, "seriously?" Eventually the fishing boat disappeared behind the bow of the Kittitas and I then felt the engines rumble to life again (further indicating the action the ferry crew had to take to avoid a collision by slowing down). I walked back to my car still in disbelief of what had just happened, all for the sake of saving two minutes of travel time, and promptly told my wife to never let me race the Washington State Ferry system.
AJFishDude
October 2014
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