Albion: First kayak salmon!

Fished out of Albion with three others yesterday. The fishing was generally slow, not a hot bite, but we plugged away and got some keepers. Polepole bogarted the Lings, catching his limit while the rest of us failed to get any.
The ocean is looking really good - a huge amount of phytoplankton and zooplankton, lots of baitfish, the kelp beds are expanding, and the water is nice and cold (around 51F). The abundance of food probably explains the slow bite - all the fish are stuffed, mostly with small prey.

The big event for me was catching my first kayak salmon, a legal-sized King that hit a little rockfish jig while I was moving from one spot to another. Unfortunately salmon season doesn't open up here until next Tuesday, so after several minutes of excitement I managed to bring it to the boat, get the hook out (fortunately barbless), and watch it zip away.
Two hours later we got checked by the CDFW patrol boat, so it sure was a good day to be a law-abiding citizen!

We saw several salmon chasing baitfish, and one even hit my buddy's rockfish jig while he was fiddling around with a descender. So they are out there and voracious! By Tuesday of course they will all disappear...

Congrats on the bitter sweet catch and release.  Bet your pumped to get out there and try again!

Awesome report. Hoping to fish Albion end of next .month. Thanks for the motivation.

Alex

Well done, Tim! Thanks for sharing the atory

Polepole bogarted the Lings, catching his limit while the rest of us failed to get any.

What?  I bagged a limit of lings and I wasn't even there.  Who was this imposter?   

-Allen

Thanks for the update. I hope to catch one when we're there next month.

Al

Isn’t it fun when fish bite when you’re not even trying?

Isn’t it fun when fish bite when you’re not even trying?

It's even more fun when you catch fish without even being there...

Congrats -- the jig bite is such a hoot, trolling doesn't come close to that experience for me.

Polepole bogarted the Lings, catching his limit while the rest of us failed to get any.

What?  I bagged a limit of lings and I wasn't even there.  Who was this imposter?   

-Allen

Whoops, apparently I got you mixed up with someone else!  I'm blaming the salmon, it got into my head and I'm just all messed up now.

Isn’t it fun when fish bite when you’re not even trying?

The guy who was with me caught a small rockfish and while he was getting his descender rigged, had his jig dangling in the water maybe 10-15 feet down. He had a salmon hit it and run around briefly before spitting it out. Crazy!

I just know what all this portends though. As soon as the season opens they will shun everything we offer.

Nice to know there are some around up there.

Going out tomorrow!

Tried to go back out there opening day but the wind came up overnight and we couldn't even make it to the buoy. Super sloppy out there and the wind was getting worse.
A friend in a power boat went to pretty much the same area we were in last week, and caught two 15-pounders. So they were still out there, we just couldn't reach them.

Polepole bogarted the Lings, catching his limit while the rest of us failed to get any.

What?  I bagged a limit of lings and I wasn't even there.  Who was this imposter?   

-Allen

I think a safe guess would be Ariel Cuna... When he's not pretending to be Virginia he is pretending to be you!!! LOL