As Arthur put it, as we headed back at around 1 PM: “another perfect score.” His meaning was: zero fish caught. The wind was picking up, snapping waves at the boat as we entered Port Saint Nick via the south entrance.
Of course, we started out too late in the season, didn’t we? Anyway, we should have been able to catch some halibut – there have been reports from other fishers I’ve talked to, at the gift store, about catching halibut. But we only had one halibut pole (Arthur forgot to fix the other one, which was declared broken a few outings back), and the place we’d been lucky last year didn’t work out. We caught two of what I call a small “uglyfish” – some kind of bottom fish or rock fish, that we returned.
We’d tried for halibut after an obligatory troll down the east side of San Juan Island. That was utterly fruitless, too. We caught a lot of kelp.
We hadn’t started early – maybe we left the dock at around 8:30. But the sea was very calm and some heavy fog made our navigation out the inlet a GPS-based untertaking. It had lifted by the time we reached the open waters of Bucarelli Bay.
Overall, nothing really went wrong. It was just what fishing would be like, if it were an overly dramatic sigh.
Seasonal totals:
- Coho: 5 (minus 1 lost at dock)
- Kings: 0
- Halibut: 0
- Other: 0
- Too-small fish sent home to mama: 5
