June Fishing Recap

Wrapped up my June charters yesterday. Did 26 of them, but two days were halibut only as my group was tagged out on kings the first three days. Managed to get limits on all of my June days. Wasn't easy but it was possible. It's a very low abundance year so you really had to know what was going on and stick to the areas with fish. It wasn't like a high abundance year where you could burn fuel and expect to run into fish eventually.

The majority of the king fishing for me happened down on Suemez in two different spots. Early in June it was the Santa Cruz/Rosery area. Downriggers with flashers/hoochies. Most days I'd have my limit of kings before 8am, but had several days of grinding it out. Later in the month offshore of Felix was good and we starting fishing for them with downriggers, and ended the month mooching for them. It was pretty good to be honest with you and we had many days we were done with kings early and you'd have no idea it was a low abundance year. When the killer whales showed up to Felix, I was able to pull limits off of Addington and Granite for several days. They keys to success for kings was having the flexibility to troll, networking with other guides who understand fish, and leaving early.

Bottomfish and halibut was much better than I expected. Nice keeper sized halibut off Suemez, Baker, and Noyes pretty much everywhere I fished. Was able to find many halibut over 32" and some at the coveted 37.5 inches. Released many oversized halibut and filled all my GAF tags. Biggest GAF fish came in at 78". Lingcod started off very strong with some of the best lingcod fishing in years. It's starting to slow down a little on the closer in spots as most charters target them, but at the beginning of June it was hard not to catch them. Had some amazing days for lingcod and my tape measure was kept busy with a fair amount of lingcod in that 42-44 inch range. Black bass was good too.

I will be back to charter fishing on July 7th. Taking off in my troller in a few hours to hit the commercial king salmon opener.