So here is my reply to one of the complaints I received from our worst salmon trip ever in a long time. What do you think? "Thanks for taking the time to give us your perspective on a really bad day. It really does help. Here is mine. First off we were trolling because it has been producing fish. We were limited on Kings the day before by 12 noon with crew fish and had a great day too the day before that. There have been 8 or 9 “Skunk” trips on big charter boats drifting this year so far, one great skipper with 40 years experience was skunked twice in one week. I told everyone in my speech I hate to troll. If you did not want to troll, rather than writing a letter, why did you not walk up to the wheelhouse and ask about drifting? We had some great people on the boat that can catch drifting, I only continued trolling because that was how the most Kings I heard of were being caught. We had 4 takedowns and landed our first fish. The Blue Eyes trolling behind us had 4 takedowns and landed 4 Kings at the same time. The Playboy too was trolling, also had 4 takedowns and landed 4 Kings at the same time. The Blue Eyes was fishing exactly like us, same depths, same bait, and same divers and got 8 Kings for 7 fishing by 1PM! You had to see them by us. The Rampage was drifting and had the same score as us all day, although he caught 2 fish after we went down south. We could have landed on them, no pain no gain! Dave on the Ms Magoo did get his Kings drifting, for 5 guys. I stuck with trolling because it was working better for the fleet. That being said it is fishing and you can have a really bad day when you do it 7 days a week, sooner or later no matter how you’re fishing. As for the report you heard about the fish being at 65’, we had that depth covered on the stern rods and then some. Tom was working way down there, the fish we caught came at 14 and 16 poles. They feed up. The bow shallow has been great lately. If 65’ was so great how come they hit the other depths instead? It’s random day to day. As for your comment about 2 or 3 missed fish, the 4 rods on the bow missed that many alone. One guy lost a King eating a sandwich, not picking up his rod and had native Silver and a few other bites. He complained too, but lied about bites and chances. He thought that if we had moved him he would have caught. He said some rods had 16 chances. He did not talk to me either. A lot happens on a boat outside your field of view, the deckhand has to change the baits though. He knows how many chances we had. What I said on the report was we had the bites and fish on, enough to have a decent day. Possibly not limits, just a decent day. We have tried the Coyote spoons, Coho Killers and a bunch of others; have not seen the consistency that bait has. Wish you would have brought yours or asked what we had. We catch on that stuff more when the fish are biting. We did not have any problem trolling and getting limits of Kings for 18 or more people last year, read the reports. Drifting boats were not coming close some days. I hate it as I said, I like coming home with fish more than I like just fishing. You know when we have an easy day, no one complains, when we have that really tough day, and we are twisting our brains in a knot to find fish complaints come out of the woodwork. Why don’t they come up to the wheelhouse? It’s a lot closer and a lot less typing. Sorry if you were bored, I feel really bad for the guys with skunk trips, if this is the flack we get for catching a few." Sincerely, Ken Culver, Skipper/Owner F/V Tequila Too Enterprises Westport WA tequilatoo
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 04:12:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015