We decided to try Port Angeles for two day fishing trip Wednesday and Thursday. We wanted to get some kings, but were willing to settle for most anything - even pinks. The rumor mill had fishing pretty good for kings and unbelievably good for pinks. When we got there the folks we talked to at the ramp said that the king action had slowed down the last couple of days but that pinks were so thick you could almost walk on the water. Well, it didnt work out quite like that for us.

We trolled various spots from the east end of Ediz Hook to the far side of Freshwater Bay. Shallow and deep, slow and fast, near shore and way out. We tried all pink gear and standard salmon gear - hoochies, spoons, plugs. No herring though. The best producer was an 8" white dodger followed by a standard size pink hoochie on a 14" leader. That caught one of the pinks at about 30' down and a large percentage of the jacks and coho.

We caught a bunch of fish - all small and all native - but only two pinks! Neither one was very big and didnt show all that much fight either. We mostly caught native jacks in the 14"-18" range with lots and lots of slightly larger native coho mixed in. The coho were running 16"-20". The coho fought pretty good for their size but those little jacks fought like much larger fish. Very feisty little guys. There were several times we had doubles on and times when you couldn't get the down rigger down without having a small jack or coho grab the lure before it got 10 feet down! Twice, I caught fish before I could get the line in the downrigger release.

We had trouble at first telling the difference between the coho and the pinks. They looked very similar flopping around in the net when your trying to identify them without taking them out of the water. We finally settled on the tongue test. If there were no teeth on the tongue, it was a pink.

Between the three of us we must have caught around 80-100 hookups including the ones that got off at the boat. We landed around 40-50 fish but only two pinks. This makes me wonder if most people are thinking the small coho are pinks?

When we talked to the fish checkers at the dock as we were leaving they said our experience was very typical. They had only checked two legal black mouth in two days and they were both just barely legal. One of them told us the good bite was occurring in the late afternoon and evening because of the full moon and clear skies. He said the kings were coming up shallow to feed in the evenings and over night and were too full by the next morning when all us dumb fishermen were trying to catch them!

On Thursday we tried crabbing inside the harbor. One of the fish checkers said that the pink action was very very hot over in Dungeness Bay, so we decided to try that in between pulling pot - we got zip. Not even the usual jacks and small coho. There was absolutely nothing on the scope. Oh - we did snag one small flounder while r=dragging the bottom :)

We had a fun time even with the small fish sizes - at least we were catching something! The ocean was very well behaved both days and the weather was beautiful.

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