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PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN KEIZER

NICE CATCH. John Keizer presenting an acquaintance he made while fishing.

Westport is still full of surprises for anglers

By Capt. John Keizer

WESTPORT, Wash. –Westport has been known for years as the “Salmon Capitol of the World.” Literally hundreds of charter boats fished out of Westport and nearby Ocean Shores before the salmon crash of the late 1980s, and thousands of anglers from the Pacific Northwest and the entire nation made an annual summer salmon pilgrimage to this area.

The charter fleet is much reduced today. Despite all of the changes to the Washington central coast’s Marine Area 2 – which includes waters between Ledbetter Point on the south and the mouth of the Queets River on the north – this area still remains the most popular and most productive Chinook destination on the Washington coast.

The Westport salmon season normally gets cooking in early July, with the bulk of the Westport-caught salmon being Columbia River fish; consequently, schools of fish will tend to move south, especially later into the season.

Finding fish: Look for salmon to concentrate where the bait is located, and the best fishing will be where you find schools of herring. These salmon will be actively feeding in these areas. For years, the process of finding feeding birds or marking bait on your sonar as you pass over it has translated into some long days before finding feeding salmon. One of the newest methods of locating bait is the Terrafin SST satellite chlorophyll charts. This subscription service usually used by tuna anglers to find warm water on temperature charts now includes chlorophyll charts.

Chlorophyll in the water is generally produced by plankton, so in effect you are measuring the amount of plankton (herring food) in the water. High levels of chlorophyll indicate off-color, nutrient- rich water. Lower levels of chlorophyll indicate cleaner blue water. You want the areas on the chart with the higher levels.

These charts will get you into the general area by providing locations and distance from port to the location on the chart, but after that, it is back to locating bait by feeding birds and putting your sonar to good use to locate bait.

Bar crossing: When heading out to fish from Westport, you will be crossing the Grays Harbor Bar. Tidal exchange is the key to crossing this bar. The best time to cross is on high slack or an hour or two each side of it, but as fishermen wanting to be on the water early, that does not always pan out.

The key to remember is the roughest bar crossing will occur on the last part of an outgoing tide, when the river’s outgoing water is being resisted by the ocean. The bar tends to flatten out on the incoming tide, with the flattest at the high tide change to several hours after.

The tidal exchange and offshore winds will govern how rough the bar is going to be to cross each day. When it is rough, keep your boat speed down and be ready to throttle down as you crest waves so that you do not slam your boat into a trough on the backside of a crest you just crossed. If the ocean has been churned up by a storm, it may take several days to lie down.

Foggy conditions can make for interesting bar crossings, and those conditions can last all day at times. Good global positioning satellites (GPS) and radar are worth their weight in gold. The typical wind here will come from offshore, and usually from the southwest.

It pays to be prudent when fishing the ocean: go out in groups, and if you have never crossed the bar before, follow a more experienced angler out the first time. Also be on alert for commercial crab pot strings just after you cross that bar – they tend to be in this shallow water when the season is open.

The 2008 season: For me, “typical” never seems the same from year to year when it comes to ocean fishing. I have caught large Chinook right on top of the water on bright sunny days and other times fishing for them right on the deck in 120 to 150 feet of water. You just never know, so be ready to cover the water column.

You will find Coho from right on top to down 10 to 40 feet. Coho anglers must release any Coho with an intact adipose fin. Only hatchery origin Coho missing an adipose fin clipped off before the fish were released as juveniles may be kept in this selective fishery.

Last year was a tough one for Chinook anglers fishing Westport, but those putting in their time were still rewarded with some nice fish. I had my best luck fishing west of the harbor in 200 to 230 feet of water.

What is the secret to catching large 30- to 40-pound kings? With a one-fish daily Chinook limit, you have to release many keeper fish, and sometimes many in the mid- to upper 20-pound range. Sounds easy right?

Well, it is not. Most anglers will not let a 20-pound king go and take a chance of coming home empty handed.

Herring tips: The most-used techniques for ocean salmon fishing is mooching, motor mooching and downrigger trolling. The fresh cutplug herring is the number one bait in this neck of the woods.

Begin your bait preparation with a sharp knife. Lay the herring on the cutting board with the head to the right, make one clean cut at a 45-degree angle behind the gills, with the knife slightly angled toward the tail. Remove the head and viscera from the body cavity.

Pre-tie several leaders with 3/0 and 4/0 hooks in 12- to 14-pound test about six to eight feet long. Take the first hook and run it through the abdomen and out through the lateral line on the side of the herring, leaving it to hang free. Take the top hook (the 4/0) and run it out the top of spine of the herring near the front of the cut. If you did it right, it will spin like a drill bit in the water. Big kings like a tight spinning herring.

Add a two- to six-ounce mooching sinker (depending on the current) and you are good to go.

Mooching: Fish the total water column while mooching by dropping your bait below where you mark bait and reeling up slowly. Or, you can watch your sonar and target feeding Chinook under the bait schools.

When you feel the “tap tap tap” on the line, just feed the bait to the fish until the rod starts to bend; a firm hook set and the fish is on.

If you are motor mooching, start out at a slow troll and periodically take the boat out of gear. Let the gear drop, then put the motor back in gear – this tends to trigger a strike.

Being able to cover lots of water with your tackle at a controlled depth is an extremely effective way to fish for Chinook.

My downrigger rod and reel setup is a Shimano Tekota 500LC size reel and 10 1/2-foot moderate-action downrigger rods. Rigged with 25-pound test mainline makes this a killer combination on large Chinook, and the moderate action of the rod survives the daily stress of being bent tight in a rod holder all day.

Trolling gear 1: The large-sized rotating flashers with hoochies are super producers off a downrigger as searching rigs. They create tons of noise as they rotate and will attract fish into a trolling spread from great distances. Once you locate salmon schools and start hooking up on fish, size down to smaller eight-inch flashers or even six to eight-inch salmon plugs.

You will catch larger fish and enjoy the fight much more than fighting the drag created by the 11-inch rotating flashers.

If you really want to enjoy the reward of a large Chinook on light tackle, it is hard to beat just trolling a cutplug herring trolled solo or with a Fish Flash behind a downrigger. When the only thing between you and a large Chinook is two hooks it just does not get any better.

Running downriggers is easily the most productive method for finding Chinook out of Westport.

Trolling gear 2: One of the top-producing big fish baits is a five to eight-inch J-Plug. These are rigged with a single swash hook, and various colors will produce. They need to be fished 45 to 50 feet behind the downrigger release clips to work correctly and produce better if trolled faster than a flasher/squid setup.

The trick to producing fish in the ocean is paying close attention to your sonar and GPS. You need to make constant adjustments to the downrigger when you locate baitfish to keep your gear at the same depth as the bait. When you mark a bait school, quick save it to the GPS so you can circle around and troll over it again.

John Keizer is the founder of Fish Frontiers. For more information see www.fishfrontiers.com.

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