Opening Day Reports - Area 9 & 10

Have been swamped all day long and found no time to get any information up earlier. Overall, the opener was not too bad! We had lots of fairly good reports coming out of most of the popular spots in 9 & 10. With the number of boats that were on the water I really wonder if anyone works any more!

Port Townsend fishing was not to bad with a fair number of fish coming from this popular spot. There were perhaps as many as a couple of hundred boats fishing there today. Most everyone that we spoke with had at least opportunities to land fish there today. I spoke with Dave Sanford this afternoon, who is a Mid Channel regular had a 19 1/2 and 24 this AM jigging with Dungeness Stingers. He mentioned that most of his friends also had at least a fish per boat. He mentioned that there was a good fairly short bite this morning where he saw good numbers of fish being landed. Some of the trollers that we spoke with also had fair fishing dragging the bottom with flashers and candlefish imitations with the popular Silver Horde Gold Star Coho Killer Spoons accounting for their share of the fish. Popular finishes were of course the White Lightning, White Lighting / Cream (Glow back instead of the chrome), Lemon Cream, Cookies N Cream, Irish Cream and Grape Cream. Hoochies in the OAL12R (Purple Haze) in needlefish and octopus styles as well as Grand Slam Bucktails in white or green finishes all worked well. We spoke with one of the customers that worked hard for his limits but ended up with 4 for him and his partner in the 8 - 14 pound range.

The fishing here at Mid Channel should just get better over the next three weeks and we should see some very good fishing coming out of here when the tides settle down a tad and we get some good outgoing tides in the mornings.

I will post a few more reports of what we heard today in the AM.