We headed out of Rudee Inlet Sunday morning to find big waves and birds working right outside of the inlet. It looked good. We joined a couple of other boats trolling the area. We did not get a quick bite so we picked them up and ran south. We were sorry we did. No fish and big following seas were going to make for a miserable ride back. The fish were not where we left them last week…we kept going. 32 miles south of the inlet, we found the birds. Actually, there were gannets everywhere, all along the coast but these were thick and working 1/2 mile off of the beach. It never stopped. Birds and fish feeding all day. We constantly caught fish for 8 full hours when we finally gave up. The fish never did. We started out trolling, all of the rods would go down, then whoever was not on a tolling rod would break out their jigs and hook up. Eventually, we just put away the trolling gear and just jigged them. The fish were feeding on large herring, maybe 10 inches long. They were fresh enough that they looked like they should still be alive when they were spit up on the deck. Everyone is sore today. We kept our limit of big rockfish letting the largest go. We registered 10 citations, 9 releases and there were more we did not measure. Ric kept his first weight citation rockfish at 42 pounds. We had a number of others in the 40 something pound range that were let go. By the afternoon, the wind had calmed down and it was a nice ride back to the inlet.
