Fishing Report: Bottom Fishing February 10, 2018

We left Portland at 5:30 a.m. and headed to Garibaldi for the first bottom fishing trip of 2018 in my 20’ Weldcraft, had two friends with me, Mark and Mitch. We dropped three crab pots south of the entrance and headed to the Three Arches area. It appeared the fish were somewhat spread out, but we managed to catch our six ling cod limit in short order. We also put five black sea bass in the box. We decided to try and catch some more bass to get closer to our fifteen fish limit for three anglers. The next three fish were large ling cod, twenty-pound category, which were carefully released, as we already had our limits of lings. We managed another five bass and decided to get our pots and return to port, did not want to go over the bar too close to max ebb tide. We got twelve keeper crab out of our three pots. There were hundreds, if not thousands of crab pots all along the coast, the commercial fleet is in
full force, I think this impacted our harvest, but I appreciate the economic importance of commercial crabbing, and would not want to deny people the opportunity to have this exceptional table fare. The day started out very cold, as we went over the coastal range, it was below freezing. A car had gone off the road, there was black ice on the road, we reduced speed significantly until the temperature came back up as we neared the coast. Now, I am watching the forecast very closely for next Friday, looks like a vacation day may be in order!

Ling cod and bass caught on these lures, for purchase in our shop!