Here Fishy Fishy

I've been deep sea fishing and boating for more than 50 years now and I have, no matter the conditions, never gotten sea sick. The record is still intact but it darn near ended today. Went out with Five Star Charters out of Gold Beach, Oregon. They are a wonderful family operated charter company! The six o'clock departure left the dock in a heavy fog. Very heavy. That's been how every day here has started so far so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. The port seas were dead calm. But the minute we left the safety of the harbor and passed the end of the rock jetties that protect it, it was obvious conditions on the outside were quite different. It wasn't windy there but there was a large and building swell that I will call "confused."  You never knew where it was rolling into the boat from or how high the swell would be. I felt fine for about 20 minutes on the way out to the fishing ground, and maybe I would have been fine all day, no telling, but when the guy fishing next to me began his full day of hurling, it got harder and harder for me to keep from wolfing my own cookies, if you get my drift. At one point I felt sooo bad I handed my pole to the captain and dropped to my knees to hang the head over the rail. But fortunately the feeling passed and I got back to fishing. It pretty much came and went all day, but everything stayed down. Oh yea!

I took my limit in Ling Cod with the largest one of the day, and my seven fish limit of Rockfish (a mixed aggregate of colorful varieties). I was the only one of the six on board that got both limits for the day. I caught a few species that because there was no bag limit at this time had to be released and a few of them were ginormous; that's a word, right?. That's the way it goes. Now when the slide show comes your way, the astute observer will note pictures at the dock.....and then more pictures back at the dock. Because looking through a view finder while out there riding the swell up and down would have been a critical and record ending error on my part and I just didn't do it.

Elsewhere in this post- a picture or two from the spit where I have been surf fishing for perch (I got a 3 1/2 pounder the other night which is huge for that species. Camera was back at the rig.

And we have a few shots from Myers Beach (which always makes me think of Myers Fork, Chickenites). We go there pretty much daily at low tide for musseling, then bring home our limit and put them in the smoker and finish them with homemade chili oil and vacuum packing. Some good!