I think that someone hid a banana in my boat some where. While fishing Johnson Point and Fishtrap in the south sound we went 0 for 8 on some nice kings. Not sure what was up. We had it dialed in and had no problems getting bit but just couldn’t put one in the net. Starting at Johnson Point during the start of the flood tide there was lots of bait showing on the meter so hopes of putting a Chinook in the net were high. I figured that we would give it about 3 or 4 hours on the troll and then move up Fishtrap to drift and fish jigs before finishing the day back at Johnson Point. Over all a good plan but…

We were running a green and red 11” flasher followed by a 3.5” cookies and cream spoon liberally smeared with UV/Anchovy Smelly Jelly and a green/UV flasher followed by a variety of Coho Killers spoons. The hot set up was the green and red 11” flasher and cookies and cream spoon. Tried various depths but fishing at 90’ in 110-130’ of water was the magic depth for the day. Our trolling speed was in the ball park of 2.5-3.0 mph. For our boat I troll for Chinook at 1,000 rpm giving us the right cable angle and an over the water speed of about 2.5 mph.

Arriving at Johnson Point around 6:00 am we fished the west side of the ledge and although we were metering a lot of bait were seeing very few individual salmon. The whole area was absolutely swarming with large jellyfish making the fishing very difficult. We had to keep pulling the gear to remove jellyfish goo so running manual downriggers the day was a real work out. I think that we hooked and lost 2 or 3 fish at our initial stop but got tired of the jellyfish so moved up to Fishtrap to work the jigs for an hour or so. While working the jigs we had one nice fish on but didn’t put it in the net. I wanted to fish through the tide change on the east side of Johnson Point so at about 10:30 we headed back to the point and deployed the trolling gear. Almost immediately the green and red flasher setup gets bit and is stripping line but a few minutes later it’s gone. We fished the area through the tide change hooking and loosing 3 more fish while scratching my head thinking what the … and headed in.

It was beautiful sunny day on the water and I had a difficult time figuring out how to rate the fishing. We had already planned to catch and release for the day so loosing the fish was not a huge deal. We had constant action hooking shakers or adult fish frequently, just couldn’t put an adult in the net. I settled on a rating of 4 because we did hook and fight numerous fish throughout the morning. Launching at Boston Harbor we were back on the trailer at 12:30. Speaking of, launching at Boston Harbor on a minus tide is a bit of a challenge and I would strongly recommend using the Swantown ramp instead.

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