Into the Fog: Our Deception Pass Lingcod Mission

May 1st is essentially the beginning of fishing season. Before that there is a brief blackmouth season, but on May 1st lingcod opens for six weeks, and all local saltwater fishermen take to the water in droves. The weather is finally getting warm, and people scramble to prepare their boats and their gear for the season. Dave and I in four attempts last year failed to catch a single lingcod. I won’t consider myself to be a “real” fisherman until I finally catch one, not with the help of a guide, but on my boat, using my own gear, and by my own wits. We’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for months. Last year we primarily fished at Possession Point, off the south end of Whidbey Island, using the live bait method. This year we decided we were tired of beating our heads against a wall and decided to fish the Deception Pass area using artificial lures called “swim baits”.

The first Saturday in May was a beautiful day, though still a little chilly in the morning. I had spent a week getting everything ready, and we were optimistic that it would be our day. Lingcod are bottomfish which feed when they don’t have to fight the tidal currents. Slack tide would be mid-day, so there was no reason to be on the water at the crack of dawn. We met up at the luxuriously slothful time of 6:45 a.m. to start the hourlong drive to the scenic Cornet Bay boat launch. Coming over the Deception Pass Bridge we were treated to a stunning view of fog clouds on both sides of the bridge. The parking lot was almost full, but I found one spot I had to back my trailer into. While getting ready, I discovered that I had accidentally grabbed my wife’s identical boating jacket instead of my own. I spent the day feeling like I was in a straightjacket, with my shoulders compressed and sleeves way too short. By the time we set up and launched, the fog was gone and we sped under the bridge towards our fishing grounds. The current through the pass was nearly 6 mph, and the turbulent sea was roiling accordingly. In a trawler or sailboat it would be foolhardy to traverse the pass at such a time, but in a Whaler we could speed right through with little fear.

About a mile west of the bridge, we plunged into a surprise fog bank, the likes of which I’d never experienced in a boat. I cut the speed back to minimum planning speed, about 16 mph, and started navigating by GPS alone with no visual cues. We saw two boats jump out of the fog, a reminder to keep alert. We turned north along the coast and crossed Burrows Bay. Rocks and small islands seemed to suddenly jump out of the fog when we came upon them, even though I had been watching them on the GPS. After a few miles of this, the sun became brighter, details started to form in the world, and we could eventually see the coast we were driving along. We arrived at our first planned fishing spot, a small uninhabited island called Young Island. There is a narrow channel between it and Burrows Island, and there we found a large family of seals sitting on rocks in the channel. As we arrived we heard someone calling the Coast Guard on the emergency channel to report that a boat had run aground, high centered on a rock in the San Juan Islands called Black Rock. Someone was having a bad day. I saw a Facebook post about it later with photos. It was a newer expensive boat.

We fished in the channel a little bit, but had no luck. We decided to try the channel between Burrows and Allen Islands, and fished there for quite a while. We watched another boat catch a lingcod there and release it because it was too small. We knew we were in the right place though. The tidal currents in Puget Sound are quite complex, and islands influence them like rocks in a river. Even though it was ripping through Deception Pass, a couple of miles away the current was quite still, and we enjoyed a long gentle drift which was perfect for lingcod fishing. Still, we never had a single bite.

About 11:00 we decided to head back to the pass to take advantage of some spots near there. The slack tide window there would only be half an hour long. Along the way we found a cluster of boats fishing an area around a big red day marker. It was called Dennis Shoal. We decided that the other boats must know something we didn’t. As I approached the boats I suddenly saw a whole forest of kelp, which I thought was odd this far offshore. I checked my depth sounder and it was only seven feet deep! I suddenly resolved to pay attention and not become like the cautionary tale we had heard earlier on the radio. While fishing, there we heard a loud distant snort of water and air. A man on a boat in front of us pointed our direction and yelled, “Whale!”. I spun my heard around just in time to see a huge tail of a baleen whale behind our boat, probably a gray or humpback, splash into the water. We watched for a while but never saw it again.

This spot was crowded and we began to question whether they were fishing for lingcod at all; they might have been fishing for halibut. We decided that our herd mentality had perhaps been a mistake, and to proceed with our original plan of fishing around the west side of Deception Pass. We made a couple of drifts over some submerged rocks, and tried an underwater hole on the northeast side of Deception Island. We were running out of time.

We finally decided to give up and try our backup plan of catching some kelp greenling, which I’ve never caught before but always wanted to. We had heard that Fidalgo Head near Anacortes was a good spot. By the time we got there, however, slack tide was definitely over. By the time we located the potentially fruitful kelp forest, the current was too strong to safely fish. We would now have to return home with a dry net, a cooler full of ice, and our tails between our legs. Our lingcod losing streak continues. I’m really starting to think that it’s Daves’s fault, and that maybe he’s just a “Lingcod Jonah”. I resisted the urge to throw him overboard to test my theory. Maybe next time. On the way back I spotted a harbor porpoise. It had at least been a great day for wildlife, with smooth seas (except for a few big boat wakes) and sunny weather. It wasn’t a bad day to weave around between forested islands, fish or no fish.