Lings

[SurfnFish]

They really are tasty little buggers. I haven't kept one to eat in quite a while but used to keep a large one off the beach every now and then while Salmon fishing. Kinda miss the occasional flounder sandwich for lunch.

I do not allow any casting whatsoever with jigs on my boat. Those trembles are dangerous enough sitting in a bucket, let alone flying through the air. My biggest reason though is that if we're fishing hardware for lings we are in 450' or deeper, and casting does absolutely nothing except cause tangles and make it more difficult for me to assess the scope on the lines for maintaining boat position. That shit drives me nuts lol

damn, 450' a whole lotta work, taking a straight heavy drop. On an off day scouting trip, spent much of a day searching for some peaks I found on an old nautical map (pre GPS), ran across 3 peaks that thrust straight up to 180' from 350', turned out to be loaded with lings. Used my radar for finding it going forward...12 miles off one landmark, 13 miles off another. Back when my depth finder was a Furono chart recorder, paper slowly unrolling onto the floor as we ran...lol

 

[Nick Clayton]

damn, 450' a whole lotta work, taking a straight heavy drop. On an off day scouting trip, spent much of a day searching for some peaks I found on an old nautical map (pre GPS), ran across 3 peaks that thrust straight up to 180' from 350', turned out to be loaded with lings. Used my radar for finding it going forward...12 miles off one landmark, 13 miles off another. Back when my depth finder was a Furono chart recorder, paper slowly unrolling onto the floor as we ran...lol

We can only fish that deep on Halibut days, or during a short "all depth" season the first two weeks of June. The rest of the season we are required to fish inside a 30 fathom line.

On days that we can fish deep we are typically 500-600', occasionally up to 750'. Two pounds of lead is our go to. No electric reels on our boats, lots of reeling lol. The fishing, especially for lings, is pretty friggen outstanding though. At those depths anything that moves down there will get eaten. Pipe jigs that bang around and make a ruckus become very effective out there where Inshore they are pretty meh. Still, even in the deep, lings will gobble flounder over pretty much everything else.

Out of Westport we don't have as much dramatic structure as many other places in the state. Our reefs are very small compared to further north at Neah or La Push. A lot of what we fish offshore is just big high spots with a hard bottom.

 

[Paige]

damn, 450' a whole lotta work, taking a straight heavy drop. On an off day scouting trip, spent much of a day searching for some peaks I found on an old nautical map (pre GPS), ran across 3 peaks that thrust straight up to 180' from 350', turned out to be loaded with lings. Used my radar for finding it going forward...12 miles off one landmark, 13 miles off another. Back when my depth finder was a Furono chart recorder, paper slowly unrolling onto the floor as we ran...lol

My old man had the same furono chart recorder on his 1st charter boat back in 86. His last boat he still didn't have a modern GPS chart plotter, he just had a GPS and went of Long/Lat chordnets and knew exactly where he was at all times.
I took him out in my boat with a Lowrance, and he still looked at the numbers and would tell me Im off position, LOL.
Until I limited us out on Lings on that 1st pass!

 

[Jim in Anacortes]

I remember the paper rolls on my depth sounder. We used to draw some damn funny cartoons over the soundings. The electronics today are miraculous compared to our RDF (radio direction finder) that was state of the art back then.

 

[Jim in Anacortes]

When GPS first came out, it was intentionally "dumbed down" to only allow the military precise locating. Smart people used the old technology of RDF to make the GPS much more precise. Eventually our military allowed the precision in GPS that we see today.

 

[Jim in Anacortes]

I was stoked the day I got my first black and white depth sounder. Years later I got my "seven color Foruno"..holy hell, I played that thing like a strata various violin. Today..the electronics are simply mind blowing.

 

[Chucker]

Out here we fish live flounder for pretty much all of our lingcod fishing. We stop to catch flounder every morning on our way out. It's a great way to get the blood flowing, get people used to the gear, and for catching lings it just can't be beat. Plus catching flounder is just fun as hell

Inshore, flounder out fishes everything bar none. We didn't used to do it as much when fishing deep water but over the years that has changed. We get em on herring and other bait when fishing Halibut, and pipe jigs will definitely get em as well. The problem with jigs is that it is so physically demanding. Most people run out of steam pretty quickly when jigging that deep. Anymore I don't run jigs on my boat hardly at all, but it does work and there is a time and place. Flounder also greatly minimizes bi catch such as yellowe eye, skate, and dog fish. Lings will eat damn near anything, including each other, but I'll put live flounder against anything out there for day in, day out lingcod fishing.

In the event of an apocalypse I'm taking a boat and some flounder gear. Won't have any trouble feeding myself, and I dunno if I could ever get sick of eating lingcod

I have tried fishing live sanddabs for lings quite a few times, and never got as much as a bite.

 

[Dave Boyle]

flounder taste so damn good! Corrected my post, limited my trips to 20 on the 65'..wanted plenty of elbow room for all those hooks teeth and gaffs.
Yea, flinging bars for hours is a workout...my hard rule was no OH casting with bars, under hand from over the side only...only took 1x of having a guy with a treble fully impaled in his leg to make that a sit-down rule if not followed.

Flinging big stuff is really dangerous. I remember fishing for yellow tail off a big day charter boat in San Diego where there was an area for us folks throwing Tady's, basically big 1 lb. jigs that you cast with 40 lb line as far as you can and then retrieve back as fast as you can. A guy walked thru the area for casting jigs without looking and he was hit and got knocked out, just as well the the treble went in the top of his neck/jawline just missing his jugular and ripped up to his hair line. It was horrid. The skipper had a coast guard cutter steam right out immediately. A deck hand hosed off all the blood off the deck and we call got back to fishing, eventually...

Dave

 

[SurfnFish]

Flinging big stuff is really dangerous. I remember fishing for yellow tail off a big day charter boat in San Diego where there was an area for us folks throwing Tady's, basically big 1 lb. jigs that you cast with 40 lb line as far as you can and then retrieve back as fast as you can. A guy walked thru the area for casting jigs without looking and he was hit and got knocked out, just as well the the treble went in the top of his neck/jawline just missing his jugular and ripped up to his hair line. It was horrid. The skipper had a coast guard cutter steam right out immediately. A deck hand hosed off all the blood off the deck and we call got back to fishing, eventually...

Dave

every charter skipper has similar injury horror stories, as well as the occasional heart attack requiring CPR and a CG chopper airlift. Got my 60 ton license at 25, and it was a wake up call for maturity having to deal with unexpected situations that often involved big hooks, bad attitudes, and alcohol...there are two hard rules for skippers, return your passengers safely and never lose control of your vessel...put in enough days at sea and there will be challenges to both