In spite of the poor marine forecast for 2-2 East or Grays Harbor we headed south from Burlington at 2:00 Saturday morning. Taking a chance and knowing that we may not be able to fish because of small craft, maybe even gale warnings I think that in the back of our minds we were able to justify the trip because we had planned to stop at the Rusty Tractor for breakfast. They open daily at 5:15 am and we had chicken fried steak on the brain. Although the Rusty Tractor is 140 or more miles from the house they are excellent and have the best CFS in the state. An excuse, especially one disguised as a fishing trip to head that way is always welcome. Anyway, breakfast down the hatch we head another 40 miles to the ramp on the Johns River where we planned to launch.

On arrival we were the second rig in the parking lot. Gear all loaded and raingear on, we launch the boat and made the quick run down river to the fishing grounds. As we arrived at the mouth of the Johns River we saw a huge Chinook jump and even though we knew you couldn’t keep one if hooked that was what we needed to forget about the weather. Knowing that we had about 1 hour of the outgoing tide left, we did a downhill troll from the mouth of the Johns River to below the range markers, maybe buoy 20. Then from that point we trolled back upstream in the South Chanel to about the water tower at which time we would pick up the gear and head back down river to the range markers and reset for another up hill run. We repeated this routine numerous times throughout the day.

We were pulling Kone Zone rotating flashers in red and chartreuse and chartreuse and UV prism followed by brined and cut-plugged purple label herring. To start we were using 6 ounces of lead on an 18” dropper, 20” of 40#, the rotating flashers and 48” of 30# to a double hook rig using 4/0 and 5/0 red hooks. As the day went on I systematically made changes, some successful some not. We settled on 3 ounces of lead, a green and red rotating flasher and a 36” leader. We did not bring any fish home but I think we nailed the technique. We had three solid bites, one huge coho on, numerous chewed up herring and based on our conversations with other fishermen …we kicked butt compared to the overall fishery that day. I think that we just ran out of time before we had it dialed in and we needed another day.

Our boat 16’ open skiff did ok with the weather but we were drenched and as the day wore on I had to bail about 500 gallons of rain water. I think that I need to consider the installing a bilge pump of some sort…projects are good! Other than the weather the day was a blast. We had some action at the end of our lines, saw 8 or so different kinds of birds including a bunch of fishing pelicans, harbor seals, a black dolphin or porpoise of some kind and had a fantastic breakfast. We returned home fishless around 7:00 Saturday evening but that was ok, I didn’t have to clean fish!

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