August begins with the sounds of screams...

[Captain Rick Bentley]

..the protesting screams of fishing reels as big Chinook Salmon make their signature, line peeling runs when hooked!

August has kicked off to a great start with strong catches on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday's catch was particularly impressive with us hauling in 18 fish, releasing three of them and keeping our 3-person limit of 15 fish which nearly had our 150-quart cooler overflowing. 7 of these big Chinook were 14-20lbs each and took 15-20 minutes each to bring in; big 4-year olds as we say in the business. And we did it all in beautiful weather, calm seas, and before 10.30 AM! A truly stellar trip on the water. The day before, on Saturday's trip, the same crew from Iowa was already setting the bar pretty high for themselves with 13 fish and 4 of those Chinook weighing in at 15lb-20lbs each.

While we continue to catch Coho Salmon, Steelhead, Lake Trout and some huge Brown Trout each time out, our coolers are definitely beginning to tilt far in the balance of Chinook Salmon and big ones at that. August is primetime for Chinook Salmon and we are off to a great start. While there were only a couple of our trips out in the past two weeks which didn't yield these high numbers and huge fish, this is also an example of how fast things can change from bad to good to absolutely outstanding fishing in only hours sometimes.

And that is a large part of the mystique that surrounds fishing and even much more so, big, open-water fishing. That chance to hook into something huge and to catch a lot of them is at the heart of the romance many us hold with walking down that dock, hitting the open water, laying down the engines, and then starting to set lines. We hold that 'faith' close to us because at some point we are rewarded with our patience and perseverance because when that reward is given, we always say "it was worth the wait".

The months of August and September is my favorite time of the fishing season and the reason it is my favorite is because those rewards of huge fish and sometimes lots of them, now start to show themselves in more frequency than any other time in the season.

All of the photos from our recent trips are all updated in the Photo Gallery under '2009 fishing season'. Aside from the racks of big Chinook, take a look at some of the huge Brown Trout we have caught as well.

Hope to see you on the water soon for this magical time of the season. Weekend availability is more limited but some great weekday slots are still open and 2 & 3 person crews can also come on a weekday for $125 each. Please feel free to email me or give me a call.

Thanks for reading and thanks again to the crews that have been on board recently,

-Capt Rick