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With the weather looking so great I decided the end of last week to head out to Westport and go after some bottom fish off the jetty, and perhaps do a video to boot. After some shifts in plans I finally ended up hooking up with Nate Treat and doing something he wasn’t used to – fishing the jetty from a boat.I was pumped to say the least.

I arrived Sunday evening and pulled into an almost deserted Grayland State Park and dutifully paid my $22 to legally park and sleep over night. Last time I did this my kids were belt high…

Morning, 6:30am, I met up with Nate at his Tokeland spot for catching sandshrimp. Within 20 minutes we had a bucket of shrimp and it was off to Westport.

By the time we got everything loaded and motored out to the jetty it was around 9am, a bit later than I would have hoped. But, since we were fishing from sea and not shore, I figured that would give us an advantage. What I didn’t figure on is – it isn’t so easy maintaining a safe distance from the jetty rocks and still being able to get the bait down into the rocks/kelp. The plan had been to catch some kelp greenling and then use those to get the big bad lings.

I will admit to being more than a tad anxious and it took a while to figure out the best strategy to fish from the boat. I know it threw Nate off his established method of shore fishing. But I’ll tell you what, watching the breakers hitting the rocks and having the swells move us in that general direction kept me really shy of getting in too close. We fished the bay side, as I didn’t want to deal with ocean breakers pushing me into the rocks (so I settled on the wind pushing us closer, a deal with the devil).

We worked the shoreline and really didn’t have much success. I finally suggested we abandon the quest for greenling and instead go off a bit further and pound the bottom in the 40-60 ft range. This made me feel less anxious and able to enjoy the fishing, and we started catching some very nice black sea bass. Best success came right off the bottom, using the sand shrimp pulse a curly tail. I had tried a curly tail jig earlier and was disappointed that the obviously suspended bass seemed to have no interested (which certainly wasn’t my experience fishing Neah Bay in the past). In any case, just as we started getting into fish the tide started running again (12:30pm) and now we found ourselves being rapidly propelled into the ocean – wow, things were moving us right along. Bottom line, the wind and tide made us call it a day around 1pm.

So, we had an OK, not great day. I can say I have a much better idea about how to fish the jetty from a boat and the next time I decide to go out there I’ll be better prepared with a game plan that will work for boat fishing. We ended up with a half dozen nice black sea bass, no lings, and a better sense of how to fish this productive jetty from a boat.

Jay K

3/25/2013 10:47:00 PM

Great report!

maxxy

3/25/2013 10:58:00 PM

Hey Mike, do you know if you can catch sand shrimp by the westport jetty?

Fish-or-man?

3/25/2013 11:01:00 PM

Cool! Glad you hooked up with some rockfish! Fishing the jetty with a boat- wow/scary!

Cozmo4196

3/25/2013 11:32:00 PM

Nice report Mike. Were there many people on the jetty?

Mike Carey

3/26/2013 7:06:00 AM

Jay K - Nate tells me you can, but he has his perferred spot in Tokeland. Fish-or-man - yes, sort of! Cozmo4196 - probably a half dozen that we saw.

downriggeral

3/26/2013 1:53:00 PM

Hi Mike, is the clam gun looking thing for getting sand shrimp? Homemade? Thanks AH

natetreat

3/26/2013 5:48:00 PM

Not many sandshrimp at all on the Jetty beaches. There are a few in the mud at low tide around the marina, but if you wait for the video, you'll know why we get them at Tokeland. The gun is homemade, but you can purchase them at a well stocked tackle store, the closer to the coast you get the more likely they are to have them. We didn't do as well as I would have from the rocks, I was actually very surprised. When I fish from the rocks I usually don't have to try all that hard for limits on everything, and have figured it out pretty darn well.

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