Northwest Fishing Magazine May 2025 Volume 4 Issue 7 - Flipbook - Page 38
“And now for something
completely different,” That’s
what came to my mind
when Adrian informed us
on Wednesday, he was
going to take us to some
locations to troll for ling
cod and bottomfish. “This
should be interesting,” I
thought. He explained,
“We’ll be fishing a large
underwater reef that has a
rocky bottom surrounding
a sandy bottom. This
rocky bottom is habitat for
smaller fish and octopus,
and it draws in larger fish.
It can produce well for ling
cod,”.
Before we went trolling
for bottomfish, we
trolled some near-shore,
shallow water locations
for chinook salmon. What
spectacular scenery! The
waves crashing into the
rocky shoreline and reefs
made for some amazing
pictures. Not to mention,
a huge sea lion standing
watch over his domain and
eagles flying overhead. Our
port rod exploded in short
order and, I grabbed the
rod. This was a nice king!
Multiple strong runs gave
me a great challenge on
the knuckle buster reel
and 10-foot rod - I love this
setup! The fish eventually
weakened, and I was
able to slide him into the
awaiting net. Wow, what a
beautiful fish to start the
day!
The salmon bite was slow,
so it was time to head to
our next spot and troll
up some lings. We used
flashers and bait, using
downriggers to get the
gear down to the bottom, a
few feet off the deck in 120
feet of water. Trolling speed
was slow, we were going
just fast enough to keep
the flashers wobbling back
and forth, but not rotating.
I’d never trolled for ling cod,
nor had Aaron or Rob. It
didn’t take too long before
we were able to recognize
the sometimes light tap
tap of a bottomfish. Of
course, the lings had a
more forceful tap tap!
And on release from the
downrigger clip, it was
obvious when we had a
ling. We worked at this
productive location for a
couple of hours and caught
a lot of fish. A limit for each
of us, in fact. But it wasn’t
ling cod we were mainly
catching. Nope, instead,
time after time huge,
brightly colored yellow
eyes and vermilion came to
Adrian’s sharp gaff. As we
hit our limit for vermillion,
we could have kept fishing
this area for lings, however,
rather than stress and
kill bottomfish that likely
would not recover from
being caught from 120 feet
deep, he decided to move
us to another, smaller reef
location.
It was a good location
change! Within seconds
of lowering our first rig,
the rod doubled over.
Aaron grabbed the rod
and battled a beautiful
20-pound ling in to the
boat. Shortly after, Rob and
I got nice lings. Another
pass yielded some smaller
lings and with that we were
done for the day.
Back at the lodge, Chef
Jason had prepared
another five-star meal.
