We left by 7:20. The weather forecast wasn’t great, but it was the best of upcoming days, so I thought we should try. In fact, the weather was better than forecast, with flat water and very little wind. But it was overcast and kept trying to rain, and by the time we got home it was raining steadily.
We went out to Black Beach at the north end of San Juan first. We trolled down the east side of San Juan. Then we crossed from San Juanito (the southeast corner of San Juan) over to Tranquil Point, where we’d had so much luck two outings ago. We trolled westward to Port Estrella. We never caught anything but some tiny black bass, which Arthur threw back. Arthur said he had one bigger fish hooked right against Joe Island, but it apparently got away.
We tried for halibut in Port Estrella for about 30 minutes. Some other boats were there, but it wasn’t obvious they were catching anything either. No fish were being hauled on board the other boats, that we could see.
We returned to trolling, and circled Port Estrella a few times and then headed back along the shore back to Tranquil Point. Still nothing.
At 1 PM, we gave up and went to the fuel dock just north of Craig, to fill up the tank. Then we went home, watching the boat’s weirdly asynchronous windshield wipers in the steady rain and contemplating the moods of fish. We were fishless.
Year-to-date totals.
- Coho: 21
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Here is a small island just off Point Providence on the western tip of a peninsula of Prince of Wales Island, at Port Estrella.
When we got home, after cleaning the boat I walked up along the road in the rain and found some huckleberries and blueberries up in the shrubberies south of the road.
