This was a long full day that was full of excitement and learning my Dad and me. Our day started off early (3 am to be exact) when we left the Puyallup area around 4 am. We made it down to Westport at about 6:30 am where we figured that we would hit the 7:30 tide and get our limit of razor clams. Normally we dig out of Moclips so digging the Twin Harbors beach was new to us. Upon arrival at the beach access we figured that the sand entering the beach was too soft for us to drive on towing a 19’ boat so we ended up parking up by the bathrooms and decided that we would walk down onto the beach and dig. While getting ready a guy told us that there were no clams down off the entrance of the beach and that we would need to go south about ½ to ¾ of a mile before we could find any clams. That was fine with us because we were there early enough before the tide and began our walk down the beach. We ended up walking down the beach closer to a mile before we ended up digging our limit of clams. Now we were off back to the van and boat to get ready on our next adventure.

We launched the boat and took off over the bar and out into the ocean. This was our second trip ever out of Westport and we had high hopes of catching big ling cod and sea bass. After rounding the last Buoy and making the turn north we dropped off two crap pots at about 120 feet of water. We then headed north to some spots I had marked on the GPS in hopes of finding some structure and schools of sea bass. Spot after spot that we checked turned up no structure and no sea bass schools. Finally after being extremely frustrated I had one last spot to check further north so I set a heading and went towards the way point. Upon arrival of our destination there was a charter boat sitting right on top of our way point. So we knew this was a good sing and saw them pulling up fish. We started fishing and were right into the fish. The drift was strong and I tried slowing it down with the kicker motor but this turned out to be too difficult because I had no land to reference my direction of the drift and would quickly take the boat off the school of fish. So we decided to throughout an anchor. In doing so we managed to anchor perfectly over the school of sea bass and it was bite on. We pulled up four nice sea bass when I hooked into a nice ling cod. I fought the fish up to about 10 to 15 feet below the boat when a large sea lion made an appearance. The thing dove right down my line and I felt a hard pull and snap lost the ling cod and my gear. It was discouraging but I knew we were over the fish and we would catch others (so I thought). Now after eating my fish the sea lion must have been full and wanted to rest because if tried on multiple occasions to get into the boat. I kept swing at it will a paddle to scare it off but it seemed to get more aggressive. Finally after about 15 or 20 minutes the thing gave up and left. In doing so it effectively managed to scare off the school of fish we were sitting out. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this and if so what they did to get rid of the sea lion? I defiantly would not want a 500 pound animal jumping up in the boat with us. The teeth on the thing were scary and I am sure that they could do a lot of damage to a person if they got bit by one.

Now that all of our fish were gone we pulled anchor and began looking for another school of fish. By now the charter boats were heading in with their limits so we really did not know where to go next. So we cruised around a little bit looking for another school of fish on the sonar with no luck. We worked out way back to the crab pots hoping that they were going to be full of crab. After pulling up the first pot it was full of crab, about 15 or so. Unfortunately they were all smalls and females. We managed to get one keeper out of the pot. The next pot was worst with only three small females. So crabbing was a bust. A little discouraged we decided that we would work our way in and fish around the Jetty before loading up the boat and taking off. We got to the end of the jetty where my Dad dropped a minnow jig in and immediately hooked a nice 24” ling cod. Now we were excited because this was our first ling cod ever. We did another drift when my Dad caught a beautiful Cabazon. We were getting the hang of it and keep doing some drifts around the end of the jetty. I picked up two more lings one over 30” and the other around 23”. My Dad picked up another nice Cabazon. It was starting to get late about 8 pm and we wanted to get in before dark. We loaded the boat up and headed home with our bounty of 4 sea bass, 3 ling cod, 2 Cabazon, 1 crab and 30 clams. Not too bad of a day but hoped for more sea bass.

If anyone has some information that they would be willing to give me on fishing out of Westport it would be greatly appreciated. I am looking for structure to fish, gear being used, methods of fishing and places to set crab pots, also if anyone knows where I can get a detailed map to show the structure of the area. Any information would be helpful. Thanks for reading my report

Zach and Matt

---