Two memorable fishing trips

Shark Girl had asked me to tell about my fishing experinces. I have fished on both coast of the USA.

The Pacific Ocean

We had made a trip a cross country trip to Washington State in the 80's so my wife could visit her sister in Tacoma Washington. My brother-in -law Grant was a golfer and a fisherman so the trip went very well. We got out golfing a couple of times and it never rained once in the two weeks we visited. That is unheard of in Tacoma.

Grant and I fished the Pacific out of a southern Washington port. We were fishing on a charter in the Pacific Ocean. There were 10 people on the charter fishing for Salmon. I was new to this ocean fishing but not new to fishing. I catch on to new challenges in fishing fairly quickly. someone tells me what to do and I'll try it. I may add my special variance to the direction given. We would cast out lures when the boat came to a stop and try to catch some salmon. I worked my lure a little extra to try to get the salmon to hit. We caught Silver Salmon. You would tag the fish you caught and we each got to choose the largest of three of the fish tagged to take home. My brother-in-law and I caught half the fish that were caught that day. Grant caught 8 salmon and I caught 6. We were able to bring home our limit and share our catch with the other people on the charter. We were fishing along with another boat from the fleet in the harbor. The swells were so high when we travelled and changed spots the boat travelling 100 yards from our boat would completely disappear as you went up a swell and they went down. Several people on the boat hardly even fished because of seasickness. I hardly ever have that problem. We took the fish back in the car to Ohio and had several meals of fresh Pacific Salmon when we got home. The fish were in about 15# range.

We visited Mount Rainer, Snoqualmie Falls and Victoria Island, British Columbia, Canada during the visit.

The Atlantic Ocean

I was working in Connecticut after a company I worked for was bought out. I would go up on Monday and stay until the second Friday. I worked a lot of overtime and and didn't have many expenses with the company paying for room and board. I visited the Maritime museum in Mystic Connecticut and at pizza ate Mystic Pizza for those of you who saw the movie.

We fished a charter out of Connecticut. There were 25 people on the party boat. We fished in the Atlantic Ocean for Bluefish which were feeding on the bottom. The captain would position the boat and tell you to lower your line to the bottom. You had to watch when you let the bait down that as soon as you hit bottom to stop the reel so you wouldn't backlash. I got pretty good at getting the bait to the bottom and not back-lashing. The first people down usually caught the fish. The Blues were a good fighting fish but you had more then enough fishing pole to handle them. They ran in the 20# range.

I was fishing with my boss and a fishing buddy from Lake Hodgeson, Jim. I had taught Jim a lot about fishing at Lake Hodgeson so I expected a challenge in the number of blues we caught. My boss caught 1 fish, Jim caught 3 and I caught 13 fish. When the numbers get that high you are not unlucky no matter what so no fear of 13. We took the fish back to the hotel and gave them to the hotel staff. The hotel staff always treated us real well.

There were two fun ocean trips that I will remember for a long time to come.