Bottom Fishing – Fishing Adventure Vacation on the Cheap!

It all started with a phone call from my Dad’s old cowboy friend, who now lives in central Washington. Somewhere along the line, Delbert had found the joys of bottom fishing. For me, bottom-fishing can best be described as a day-long struggle to keep inside of me whatever was inside of me at breakfast, but I’ll get to that later…Anyway, Delbert talked Dad into making the trip to Westport, Washington to embark on a day filled with tall waves and more fish than we could shake a stick at.

This was going to be a “guys only” trip, something our clan wasn’t exactly known for. The dirty little secret is that none of our wives had even the tiniest inclination to drive 14 hours to board a rocking boat for a day in the sun. For whatever strange reason, this appeared to not appeal to them. Oh well, we were set and so my Dad, brother-in-law and I jumped into the rented Chevy Impala and started our journey.

The harder I fished, the more the folks around me were successful.

This trip was spontaneous, at least in part. We travelled as far as we could for the evening and I hit my hotels.com app in the back seat to book us a hotel in Pendleton, Oregon, only moments before driving up to the front door. One room, two beds, one sleeping bag, so we were able to maintain our space for the night without breaking the bank, which was pretty much a common theme for the weekend. The next morning we shot out of there and, without much difficulty, made our way to the Washington coast.

I was in a different world. There was moss on everything, unless it was covered in mold. Well it wasn’t quite that bad, but a long way from the Nevada desert, for sure. Mike and I wandered the tiny town of Westport, lacking any other direction for our evening, and then we hooked up with Delbert and his family for some drinks at the hotel. After a rather modest evening drinking, we racked out early in anticipation of the early-morning trip.

That morning, we hit the stepping-off location for the Goldrush, a cool old boat with a great captain and his son the first mate. After buying some sunscreen, I was ready to roll. They let you bring a cooler on board, along with lunch items and drinks if you want them. Since this wasn’t my first rodeo, I figured I’d be better to start my fast upon waking and end it when I got back to shore, so I was traveling light. I did imbibe in a free cup of coffee and one or two of those darned Red Vines™ licorice whips, figuring that wouldn’t amount to much.

Our trip to the ocean was uneventful and relatively brief, taking about an hour. The chop between the bay and the ocean was minimal and suddenly we were fishing. I’d been skunked at this before, so I paid very careful attention to the instructions. We were after rock fish. If we got our limit of those suckers, then it was dipping for lingcod to follow. I must have been paying attention, as I’m pretty sure I caught more of the rock fish than anyone else on the boat.

It was a frenzy. I don’t know how many we caught, but the boat (all 14 of us) limited out in about 90 minutes. The captain would pull us over some fish, tell us the depth, and we’d drop in as best we could. “Fish on!” could be heard everywhere on deck and as the captain and first mate wanted us to let them retrieve each fish and rebait our hooks, the metaphor of one-armed paper hanger came to mind. It was insanity as we hooked up within minutes of dropping our lines in, and the captain and first mate scrambled from fisherman to fisherman, literally as fast as they could. The only reason we didn’t limit out sooner was we didn’t have three or four crew members.

With that success under our belt, we headed to a submerged formation nearby to try for lingcod. I decided to take a quick trip to the head, and when I returned to the deck I was suddenly gripped by nausea. Up came the two red vines and a little bit of what was left of the coffee and I was able to send them over the rail with no mess! One or two people noticed, but since about a third of the fishermen had already demonstrated their inability to hold breakfast, nobody was laughing. That done, I felt great!

Again, we listened to instructions. Again we put our lines down, this time clear to the bottom of the ocean, which in this area was about 100 feet. This time, I must have missed something. Everyone caught lingcod but me and Mike. I think we were rushing our lines to the sea floor and the leader was getting twisted up in the line. Next time, I will try to let my line out slower, but keep in mind that we only drifted through the productive zone for maybe three to five minutes before we motored back around for another pass…the clock was ticking! The harder I fished, the more the folks around me were successful. I don’t know the exact laws there, but each person tagged their two fish limit and somehow each of us unsuccessful folks went home with a lingcod or two as well. I later found out just how grateful I was, as the lingcod was so much more delicious than that rock fish, which was also quite good.

A little humbled, after my raging success at rock fishing but my goose-egg on the ling cod, I accepted the beer offered me by Delbert’s daughter. I can’t recall but I may have eaten half a sandwich on our way back, just because I was feeling good. For whatever reason, neither the beer nor the sandwich triggered any adverse response and we arrived in port with no further incident.

One thing that blew me away was that the first mate fileted all of the fish on the 90 minute trip back to shore. He was so blazing fast with his knife, all of us just gaped at him for the first 10 or 12 fish, which didn’t take him a lot over five minutes to filet! These guys worked so hard for us that day, between preparation of the gear, keeping us in bait and terminal tackle all morning, and “netting” and cleaning every fish we took. Between all of that, they found time to hose down and clean the decks! Wow, these guys knew how to work, and it sure made for a great day for us.

The trip home was uneventful. For us, this adventure started on a Thursday afternoon and ended back home on a Sunday afternoon, with 28 hours of driving in between. I don’t recall the cost of the trip exactly, but I think it was around $250 each for food, rental car, room, and incidentals. I think the fishing was something between $175 and $250, but I forget. So figure a four-day trip with three nights of hotel for something around $500 each, and you could do it for less if you wanted. Would I fish a second day after making that trip? Maybe, especially if it were for another species, but the trip itself and the company we kept were at least half of the fun. We came home with about 20 pounds of fish apiece, so that is around $25/pound for line-caught fresh fish. Not a bargain, but that bonus seriously added to the value provided by this adventure.

I think it would be pretty easy to find similar adventures up and down the coast in the Pacific northwest. This was our small adventure. I share it with you, hoping you will give it a try. You absolutely can’t go wrong with Gold Rush Charters out of Westport, from my singular experience, but give others a try as well. I will plan to do this again!