Shelter Cove - 8/8 and 8/9/20

Shelter Cove felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone the last couple of days...

After a 12 day break from my favorite Nor Cal ocean access point, I was eager to get back down there with some guests to get the August catching started.  Patrick hired me up last summer, and this year he brought along friends Norm and Frank.  We postponed last Sunday due to a funky forecast, so all of us were ready and eager to execute the trip this week.  The forecast for Saturday started out looking pretty nice early in the week, but as we got closer to our date the predicted swell had ballooned up to 9', and the afternoon before our day the National Weather Service announced a Small Craft Advisory with winds 10 to 20 knots and gusts to 30.  No problem - it's the Cove.  I assured my guests that we'd be able to fish, and my guys were equipped with the right equipment and pretty solid immunity to motion sickness.  The trip was on.

Saturday came and we met up at the launch in the darkness of early morning.  A few powerboats launched before us, and by the time we were getting on the water word had come over the VHF that it was "chunky" outside, but some salmon were biting.  Hopes were high, and I was happy with the gear that my trio of guests had shown up with - Norm and Frank were on PA14's, and Patrick was solid on his Feel Free yak.  We made our way to the outside where the predicted 9' @ 9 seconds for out to 10 nautical miles was translating to about 4 to 6 feet every 7 or 8 seconds at the Cove.  It was sloppy but easily fishable, and a slight breeze was running from the southeast - the same direction as the current.  We fought the strong drift and did our best to get our baits down to the salmon, and as the charter boats caught some kings next to us, we mostly just hooked up with greenling!  The greenies were attacking CC herring, and a few cabs took the bait too - it never ceases to amaze me how certain ocean species do certain things at certain times.  Usually the vast majority of bait-eating bottom dwellers are lingcod and black rockfish, and this day we hardly caught any of those.

The charters and some other powerboats were mooching, but the strong drift and sloppy seas meant that it wouldn't be feasible to start threading and hanging baits from the yaks.  We plugged away on the trooch, and the salmon were being finicky.  Our one good chance came when I hooked up for about a minute before a 15 pounder or so shook the hooks right below my yak.  That was encouraging, but after a couple more hours with no more chrome hookups we were done fighting the conditions and ready to head to the inside.  The guys had built pretty good stringers of greenies, cabs, two chinas, a couple of blacks and one legal ling, but I'd only managed to land a short greenie and a short lingcod.  The day belongs to my guests - it doesn't matter what I land, but it was notable that I'd not retained a fish.

So we headed inside and started halibut fishing, and it turned out that my guests had brought serious game with them in this department!  Norm and Frank tossed hardware exclusively, and they both limited out on flatties to 30" or so over the next couple of hours.  Patrick and I ran bait and managed 5 or 6 shorts between us, and that was fine - everyone was happy with the trip.
Right near the end, I had two rods at work with barbs and treble stingers - with no rockfish on board and considering how tough the salmon bite had been, I had chosen to abandon my motto and practice of fishing "barbless all summer" in order to maximize my odds on the shallow hali grounds.  You can see where this is going.

Boom!  In 17' of water I was on a very hot fish that was about to spool me right off the bat.  From past experience I quickly announced that I must be on a thresher, but then it jumped.  It leapt out of the water about 60 yards out, and I was like, "WHITE SEA BASS!!"  I've never had a fish take off like this, and to see that big slab clear the water multiple times, I was sure I had a WSB.  OMG - WSB!!  I tightened my drag and started working it back toward me, but I would gain a bit and it would just rip line back off of my reel - so strong!

So I'd gotten all ready to be catching only the 3rd ever White Sea Bass at Shelter Cove, and by the time I got the fish close to me I realized it was not a Sea Bass after all.  It was a salmon.  A big salmon.  It was a big salmon that was hooked in the vent!  It was a very pissed off big salmon that was hooked in the vent, and now it was really tired.  I did a couple more minutes of tug of war with it - wincing as I watched it run from me with my hook in its ass - literally.  I eased it to me, and I figured the only way I could get that hook out was to net the fish.  Luckily it was so tired that when I finally did get it in the net it didn't even move - no split tail or significant scale loss - that felt good, and the hook came out easily too.

Norm snapped a few photos as I lifted it into my lap, and I quickly got one too, and it was time to release the big king - my estimate is 27 pounds and about 38 inches.  What a beautiful fish!
This was a fitting capper for our day, and the guys and I soon landed and parted ways after a cold beer at the truck.  The guided trip was a strong success, and my guys loaded me up.  It felt odd though to realize that I'd basically gotten skunked!  Again, it's not about me and what I catch, but then again, it really is.  I'm thankful to be in a position to have the privilege of showing others the places and things that I've come to know, and as long as events unfold in such a way that my guests gain the confidence and proficiency that they're after, I guess that me catching and retaining fish in front of them isn't actually the most important aspect of what I'm doing.  Felt Twilight Zonish though - especially having thought I'd hooked a White Sea Bass!

On my way home I saw that the forecast for Sunday now had 5 to 15 knots of wind from the southwest - not good at the Cove.  Any significant south influence can not only foul up the launch, but the fish tend to get lockjaw too.  I got ahold of my guys for Sunday, and since it would be a first trip for Richie, Ben and I agreed that we should postpone until better water was predicted.  This freed me up to rest Sunday, but I loaded my truck just in case...  because I'm a diehard, and that's OK. 

So this morning I woke up at 315AM, and it was pretty clear that I needed to go.  I hadn't fished without a guest down there in over a month, and every trip is a marketing trip, so...  YOLO - gotta go!

I got to the ramp before anyone, as I have done much of the summer, and I was determined to get out there and try to mooch up one or two of those fat chromers.  The hours passed, I had a few nibbles, I resorted to a few different trolling methods after mooching wasn't producing, the fleet filled in around me and a few fish were caught, I went on a tour of other spots out front, and finally I was done - I was throwing in the towel.  Patrick, who I'd woken up at around 6AM to let him know that I was hitting the water, had stayed on the inside to work the hali's since he and I only got shorts the day before.  As I headed inside after my salmon hours, Patrick had announced his own hali limit, and he was hitting the road.  I was just about to hit the hali grounds myself, and right before I was about to lift my salmon gear and change out for different tackle, I had a hot pumper on!  I grabbed the rod from under my leg, and the fish was gone.  I did some laps right there in shallow by Pilot Rock, but it was just a tease - an ironic message about how foolish it is to think that you can dictate what you'll catch and when.

The fleet was largely striking out - even for rockfish or any biters really.  The same applied to me - I had towed bait around the reef and hung threaded choves down in the rocks all morning, and I hadn't even caught a rockfish or lingcod.  This was rare, and it was absolutely not lost on me that I could potentially get skunked at the Cove two days in a row!  OMG - could I lose my guide's license over this?!!   

By the time I settled in over at the hali grounds I was ready to just land a fish!  I had the area largely to myself, and I was also thinking about that big salmon that I'd had to release the day before.  I would hang a barbless mooch below me while tossing hardware from a second rod.  If bait got thick or other signs developed, I could stow the hardware rod and focus on salmon again.  Boom - I had a hali chewing on my mooch already.  I put up the hardware rod, lifted the mooch rod, set the hook, and I was on a nicer fish - not a shaker.  It didn't last long though - it shook out of my barbless circle hook.  This got my hopes up though - maybe I'd get my own limit of halibut.

Three hours later I'd covered some miles, used several different setups, missed a few bites and still not landed anything - all day!  It was one thing to have "skunked" the day before while having landed several short fish and lost our only salmon opportunity (I got skunked but caught a 27 pound salmon!), but now I was about to actually get skunked-skunked.  I don't think I've ever not landed a fish at the Cove.  WTF!  Consolation was that I was hearing lots of slowness on the VHF - everyone was having a slow day, and many of us were blaming it on a big research vessel that's working around the Cove.  Yeah, that's it...

I was about toast and ready to call it when I finally had a fish on!  I got a smaller hali to the yak, and I knew it was borderline legal.  Looked good to go, so in the net it went, and when it taped out at 22.5" I was relieved to have something to show for my day.  Mostly what I got was a big heaping serving of humble pie.

I am very fortunate to be doing what I'm doing with my guiding.  I feel great about the value that I provide and the true connections that I strive to make with my people.  I know that much confidence, proficiency and joy come about as a result of my trips, and the richness of experience and the opportunities for growth that I am able to enjoy have their place among the most rewarding times in my life.  Whenever I am given a chance to feel my weaknesses, I know in my heart that I need to embrace it.  It's good for me to fall short or to not have my number come up.  I know that this gig - fishing - is about odds and continuously adjusting the dials on anything that can provide even a slightly greater advantage.  Much of what assists success or what can usher in failure has to do with attitude, and fishing isn't the only place in life where finding the half-full part can be the most important aspect of the experience.  I hope that what comes through for my guests is that what we are really trying to catch and retain is a state of mind where we can be positive and content.  At the end of the day, getting skunked may just be the best way to figure out what we are really angling for.

A big thanks to my clientele and to you too.  Thank you for participating by reading my stories and maybe taking some of it with you.  I appreciate the support, and I highly value the opportunities to share and to feel more community however we can get it.

I cherish what I have been able to do with my kayak fishing, and the roots are absolutely here at NCKA.  100%. 

 

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I saw your post on the 2020 Ocean & Bay King Salmon thread and was wondering what happened to your motto of "barbless all summer".  That must have been a hard fish to put back in the water. I’ll have to admit, it is somewhat reassuring to a novice like myself that that even the most experienced anglers have their bad days. Thanks for sharing your tales from the Cove and your passion for teaching and fishing.

Oh! The Cove. Thanks for the report, looking forward to being there.

Good read! Thanks for the write up and photos. I'll need to take a trip up that way sometime.

Thanks for another great report and fish porns Eric.

Great write up. I enjoy how your posts capture the whole experience from the launch to the high-fives at the end.

Norm!!!

It was an amazing day (weekend) with great people.  I remarked to Eric that we had "known" each other for almost 15 years now, primarily through this board, but this was the first time we had the opportunity to fish together!  Thanks for the great crash course in how and where to fish the Cove, my friend!!

Eric is a knowledgeable angler, knows the Cove well, takes the safety of his guests seriously, and is an ethical steward of the resources there (as evidenced by the fact he let that beautiful 25+ King go because it was not legally caught ).  Thanks for teaching us your "trooching" technique! 

And thanks to Pat (RiverwatcherLT) for arranging the whole thing for my 50th!  It's always a good time fishing with Pat and my buddy Frank (fbastoni), although we did miss Ms. Dana who normally rounds out our crew. 

I'll be back for sure, so much to explore and learn about that place.  Certainly a unique spot with a variety of options, and i love the laid back and chill, almost "island vibe" of Shelter Cove itself.  The people were awesome, the Tides Inn run by Eric (The Inn Keeper) and his lovely wife was perfect, the food and beer at the Gyppo Ale Mill was inspired for such an out of the way location.  I could have been happy just sitting on our balcony at the Tides, watching the waves lap the shore for a week!!  My wife loves the place as well, and we are already planning another trip. 

Norm