Posted on September 2, 2019

It is true that with Keith's and Koji's help I limited out on halibut earlier this year but all salmon attempts amounted to nothing but a croaker or a jack smelt.

Bolinas is an interesting little town with beautiful beaches and great surf with wicked shore break which capsized many a kayak. It is located right next to Duxbury Reef. Unfortunately, it is difficult to reach Bolinas from my East Bay location, otherwise I would take a trip to Bolinas more often.

I stayed two days and slept in the van (legal in Bolinas) for a night. On the first day I came across large schools of anchovies inside the reef and jigged up enough to make bait for two fishing sessions. On the salmon side not much was happening. I trolled out to deeper water, up & down the coast for a few hours, but only caught an undersized lingcod.

On the second day things were different. I met up with Koji and Eddie. Koji's intel that salmon are hanging out on the inside in 40-60 feet of water was right on. It was windy, scattered schools of anchovies and jack smelt everywhere, and king salmon on the hunt. Lots of charter boats were out and the nets were flying. I was trolling an anchovy in a Krippled Anchovy Head, rigged with two barbless circle hooks (yes, counter conventional wisdom I troll with circle hooks). Suddenly my two-foot fishing rod was shaking. Fish on! The circle hooks held very well and soon I had the salmon in my boat.

The day was still early and I kept trolling with new energy, but despite these most epic conditions one salmon was all I would get.

Later on I was floating next to Koji's yacht and we were chatting away. Suddenly Koji had a massive takedown and after a surprisingly short fight he netted a rather large salmon, weighing in at about 18 pounds if I remember correctly.

Koji used a mooching technique and I quite liked this method. You paddle upwind, dangle an anchovy upside down into the water column, and drift with the current. In my opinion this is the essence of kayak fishing if there is one.

Salmon fever is real and at some point, while rebaiting my hooks, I didn't notice that my paddle was slipping away. Another symptom of salmon fever: I didn't bring a second paddle for backup. This is something I hadn't done before and there is no good explanation why it happened on this trip other than attributing this mistake to salmon fever. The paddle was a special paddle, my last Greenland paddle carved by Wolfgang Brinck, and I miss it. I called for help on my VHF and soon Koji emerged and lent me his spare paddle thus saving my day.

This was salmon #9 for the season and despite three more salmon attempts at HMB it would be my last one.