Fished Friday with the old Frenchman on his boat as I had agreed to do a year ago before I bought my own. We fished live smelt on all four rods on home made rigs similar to a Paul's Bait rigs. We caught 15 salmon between 15 and 21". The two over 20" were both thin although one had a very impressive hook jaw, my first. Most were in the 18-19" range and were very heavy. One big 19" was kept and weighed almost 3 lbs on a digital scale.
At the same time we were fishing in a 14' bathtub 3 of my coworkers and my stepson were on my floating 22' livingroom. They too did well on everything from DB Smelt(black and Purple was best again), to live and dead smelt sewn on. Leadcore between 1 and 3 colors was working for both boats though they did catch a couple on flatlined mono. So good that we never used the riggers until Saturday.
On Saturday I fished with the boys on the Pontoon. We did not do as well as Friday but it didn't seem that anyone did based on radio traffic and talking to people. We did manage 4 Salmon and a couple of smallies on the same DB Smelt and sewn on dead smelt all on leadcore. Similar in size to Friday's fish. Got one hit all day on the riggers.
Everything worked exactly as it should. Another thanks to John Sampson and Forry for their guidance setting up the 'toon. That TraxTech was the best money I spent this year. I had everything stripped down and put away in 5 minutes for a nice ride with the kids and 3 other couples on Friday night. Exactly what wanted to be able to do.
We didn't fish Sunday. After almost 24 hours on the boat in 2 days my 12 yoa had enough and when we awoke to rain, it was time to pack up.
All in all a great weekend and I feel like for a bunch of rookies(not including the old Frenchman) we did pretty **** well. We broke all the rules, trolling bait too fast, metal too slow and bait and metal at the same time and still caught fish. We never left the bay we were staying in, living by the rule to never leave fish to find fish.
Headed back out on Wednesday with the old man and a couple of friends.
One last thing of note, there has been a lot of talk about skinny salmon this year. I have to say that a vast majority of the fish we caught were very good size. Only caught 1 real small one. And of course, the two that were long enough to enter were thin.
