Westport July 4,5

Thanks Allen, have a great 4th!

I'm going to walk out on the mudflats and punch up some sandshrimp.....just because its approaching low tide here shortly.

Hmmm, surveying the coming week's tides, the morning high ain't all that high, and the mid-day low tides aren't very low. If one could get out of the wind, one could probably fish right through the low tide change!

These tides are also not bad for morning jaunts up the tidal creeks.

The wind forecast is looking poor for fishing the N side of the S Jetty here this weekend.

How's the south side of the N. jetty? Lee and I are planning to venture to Westport sometime this week coming. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems pretty feasible to paddle across to fish the  N. jetty too. We'll shoot you a PM before we head over that way if you would like to meet up.

How's the south side of the N. jetty? Lee and I are planning to venture to Westport sometime this week coming. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems pretty feasible to paddle across to fish the  N. jetty too. We'll shoot you a PM before we head over that way if you would like to meet up.

See my comments regarding the jetty at Ocean Shores.  That's the North Jetty.  You don't want to be crossing "the bar" from one jetty to the other.

-Allen

Thanks Allen. I read them after I posted.

I got a phone call from ttm yesterday evening. He arrived here early and went out fishing along the jetty. I was out on the mudflats at 11 am scrounging up sandshrimp for surfperch fishing & thinking that ttm should be out there now instead of later when its going to be windier. He gave me a pretty good report, but I'll let him post his version.
He said he was heading down to Waikiki (Cape Disappointment) early this morning to fish on the S side of the jetty there!
I'll leak it here that he ventured out to the sunken jetty! Had I known he was here early, I'd have been out there with him.
I got shanghaied to a party last night, so didn't make it out this morning. No hangover or anything...just slept too late and not ready to go in time to launch before  or even near high tide! Wind wasn't too bad, light and from the West. Picking up now, from the NW.

Rav, let me know when you and Lee are headed down. I'd like to fish with you guys if you're here. I have an eye-doctor appt on Tues at 11am. Now that time is looking like a strategic error!  Wednesday there should be NE winds most of the morning, probably until after the high tide change, then swinging to NW and blowing harder in the late afternoon.

The tides are great this week for paddling back into the Elk River estuary, too.
Moon is overhead early in the morning and underfoot at dusk, if that means anything to you.
Yesterday, a friend and I fished for surf perch in the afternoon with no success.
Another surf perch angler we ran into told us the bite had been good early in the morning, but he also drew a blank in the afternoon.

Hmmmm..... early morning high tide with lighter winds and moon overhead and way better fishing than the windy mid-afternoon skunking.... hmmmmmm.....

Sounds great CHM. We'll let you know as soon as we have a day/time set in stone. I think both Lee and I are set on fishing the jetty for rockfish, lings, and cabies. I'm really curious to hear how TTM did on the sunken jetty. After I saw the charts posted on this thread the sunken jetty has been calling me. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the conditions are.

From what I gather he made it out there before the wind came up. The surf was pretty small yesterday,too, but its coming up a bit. We are supposed to have offshore flow starting tuesday. That means offshore winds in the mornings, becoming N to NW in the afternoons.
Its howling 15 to 20 and gusty right now.

Full report on both jettys forthcoming.  Gonna jump on a salmon charter tomorrow so I'll get on it when I get home.  My 1.5 yakfishing days yielded 5 black rocksfish (lost several more), 2 lingcod, 2 cabezon 2 teensy weensy flatties and a greenling.  Oh, almost forgot...and a starfish.

Right now, going by the surfing conditions forecast on Magic Seaweed for Westport, Wa, the winds look OK this coming Sunday for fishing on the N side of the S Jetty here. Forecast predicts WSW winds from after 10am to about 4pm or so, then switching to NW. that's during the incoming tide thru the high, so it should be decent. New Moon that day, too.
Also, after examining the upcoming predictions by the National Weather Service, looks like the "marine push" phenomenon should be working by then, granting us a nice cloud cover here on the coastal strip, and maybe even some morning and evening fog. Fog isn't bad, as long as there's a little bit of visibility. Sure beats having that cruel sun beating down hard on you all day!
 Looks like fog is rolling in on Friday, but only light/moderate overcast on Sunday.
 Right now, I'm planning on fishing the Jetty Sunday the 11th, if the conditions pan out as forecast.

Thursday, I'm paddling the Elk River estuary, and Friday maybe some other tidal creek if I have any arms left. My arms/shoulders are tired today from paddling all over the Johns River estuary yesterday afternoon/evening. Only caught one small cutthroat (5") and an even smaller Striped Sea Perch (3.5"). They both hit the same green #6 streamer that resembled a small baitfish, while I was trolling. Felt the strike, picked up my rod, set the hook on the next grab. Now you know why I'm not in the AOTY competition! The paddling and general river/estuary touring  was awesome, though!
Tomorrow? Looks like good surfing conditions nearly all day! I should probably run and go hide.

Planning on heading out there with the Clan this weekend for camping.  Will hopefully be fishing Sunday.

OK, at long last here's my westPORT rePORT

First, a disclaimer...I only fished the Westport jetty for about 5 or 6 hours.  I certainly do not have comprehensive knowledge of its intricacies like CHM does!  And one day is certainly not a great sample.  the notes I have here is based on that time, some research, talking to other folks (both jetty shore and boat fisherman) and my gut instinct.  

Westport jetty chart (excuse the crude graphics):


Got out to the end of the north side of the westport jetty at about 4ish on Saturday and was super excited because I was watching the depthfinder all the way out - super great structure.  I was expecting lots and lots of action.  There were a fair few shore and boats concentrating on the 15-50 foot depths just off the jetty.  Couple hours in, I didn't have so much as a single nibble.  Polled a few of the other boaters out there and they had the same results.  I concluded the bite must be "off".  Conveniently, the wind took a break around slack tide so I ventured out to the sunken jetty off the end (green circle).  As CHM mentioned, this area is pretty tricky due to swells breaking on the reef, and currents.  I drew a red line, below which the area is fishable only during slack water and low wind (above the line would be fishable only when the ocean is dead calm). So I got out there and it was bang-bang!  Immediately hooked up 2 lings, (one was a keeper that I dropped...argh!), a nice size cab and a large greenling.  Here's the cab:



Unfortunately, the wind started kicking up a bit and I had to get off there.  Didn't even get to fish an hour  but I tell ya, there's where the fish are.  I spent the next few hours til sunset toiling up and down the jetty, catching nothing.  I think my original conclusion about the bite being "off" was wrong...I think the jetty is just overfished.  I did not hear of, or witness anyone catch anything off that jetty.  And I saw alot of people fishing and talked to a several of them.  If the bite was truly off I don't think I'd have had luck out at the sunken jetty.  But again, there are probably other factors that I am not aware of that may have affected the fishing there.  But given that experience, and in the spirit of adventurousness,  I decided to not fish the jetty again the following day, but to follow polepole's advice and hit up Cape Disappointment on Sunday (location of the upcoming NWKA crab tourney).  This is the map of the area I fished (the area between and including the two jettys):



Notice two jettys - I'll refer to them as the "west" and "east" jettys.  Also note how close the state line is there.  I do have both an OR and WA license, but that may be something to keep when mind if fishing here.

I hit the water at 7:30AM and launched at Waikiki beach per polepole's suggestion.  Have to unload the kayak and carry it down the path and load it up again at the beach, but not too bad.  It is a surf launch but the beach is relatively protected.  Headed down the west jetty.  Basically I had the exact same experience here as the westport jetty.  All along the jetty there are shore and boat fisherman, and nobody was catching anything.  I caught a small black rockfish but that's about it.  So I headed to the very end:



And started having a little better luck.  There is a sunken part of the jetty at the very end (see green circle), the surf from the WNW was pounding it BUT just inside the rock jetty there is a small, semi-productive zone.  That would be within the green circle and to the right of the vertical red line.  There is great structure here and it can be safely fished but you have to be vigilant to not get pulled into the shallow reef area.  I got a couple of decent sized blacks here and there were lots of hits and a few lost fish.  Just like with the westport jetty though, if you can get out around the sunken jetty, that is where the fish are (below the red line only).  I got out there for just a few mins and immediately landed a cab about the same size as the day before.  However, I deemed it too unsafe to fish and quickly came back in.  So you'd really have to time it right to fish that sunken jetty.

So I decided to explore the rest of the "bay" area.  If you look at the map of Cape Disappointment above, most of the middle (white-ish) area is flat and about 30 feet deep.  There were alot of crab pot bouys and you can bounce a small jig in here and get alot of flatfish action.  They are pretty small though:



Little guys must be hungry to bite on those jigs!  Didn't get the 5lb starrys I was promised, polepole!    I'll try harder next time, didn't spend much time here.  I love catching starry flounder.  The right side of that bay, towards the "east" jetty (the darker area) is 25-50 feet deep, with un-even bottom.  Looked like it would be very productive for bottomfish but I couldn't raise any.  Headed towards the east jetty and BINGO!  There's a sunken jetty at the end that is VERY productive, and very fishable:



I drifted off the top of the reef eastwards.  Drops from 15 to 120 feet, beautiful structure.  And there was NOBODY fishing out there.  I immediately hooked into some really nice size blacks a la:



With each drift I either had them nibble off my grub tail, hooked and lost, or hooked and landed black rockfish.  No lings or cabs...but I didn't get there til the end of the day and I was *exhausted*, so I only fished there for an hour and a half or so.  I imagine they make their homes there too.  Too bad I didn't find that spot til the end!

I enjoyed Cape Disappointment immensely.  Not only does it have several fishable areas and a wide range of species, it's quite scenic too.  The dense green area in the top-right are roughly 100-foot cliffs at the base of which are neat caves and such:



The current was running too fast along the cliffs when I was there so I didn't spend much time fishing (the rightmost cliffs have dropoffs from 9 to about 35 feet), but I imagine there's some fish in there.  Looking forward to hitting the Cape again, hopefully for the tourney.  

Yesterday (Monday) I got on a Westport salmon charter.  I always thought I was impervious to motion sickness, as I have never suffered from it.  WRONG!  didn't take long for the giant swells to get to me.  Spent the better part of the 8-hour trip heaving over the side.  I don't know how my body kept finding new stuff to heave up.  It's the only time in my life I actually wanted to NOT be fishing.  Big lesson learned.  My halfhearted attempt at fishing yielded 3 hookups, 2 lost and a decent sized silver (maybe 6 or 7 lbs) that was wild.  Bummer.  This lucky gent landed the day's big fish, a 18ish-lb king:



So, other than the salmon charter, all-in-all it was a decent trip.  Didn't get to meet up with CHM but I did chat with him on the phone.  Nice fellow!  Hope to meet up with at some point.

Cheers,
Rory

Nice report TTM and cool adventure. That cab and black are fat. Did you get a measure on them?

So for the crab tourney we'll have salmon and rockfish to go after while our pots soak? Man, this is gonna be fun!!

Z

Nice!!!

Truth be told ... those 5 pound starry's were a fluke.  Only hit them that one time never to be seen again.

Nice to see fish on the east CD jetty.  How late were you fishing it?  I forgot to mention the sunset/nighttime bite along the jetties.  I don't know what it is, but some times we'd fish all afternoon only to have the black rockfish bite mysteriously turn on at sunset.  Note: getting off the jetties in the black of night is an experience in itself!

Back in the day it used to be rare to see a boat fishing the jetties.  Sounds like it's not so rare anymore.  Your experience sort of dovetails into a debate I've been having with others about artificial reefs.  Jetties are just that ... artificial reefs.

-Allen

Your experience sort of dovetails into a debate I've been having with others about artificial reefs.  Jetties are just that ... artificial reefs.

-Allen

Debate?  Certainly someone isn't saying that Jetties aren't an artificial reef?