John Kelley

Thanks fellas, have to get some more of those Mt. Dew colored flashers, for sure!LOL See you boys up there this weekend. Shawn, I met Ed over at Carl's house last night, so that was really cool! I have to add, before I forget, that Dillon was a very well behaved young man in the boat, and I never heard him complain once about being wet and cold. He is the guy in the red shirt. The other kid just met us at the cove, and helped him lift the fish board!!LOL

I arrived at the Captain's Cove in the early afternoon, and swapped a bunch of reels out of my boat to send back to the manufacturer for a consistent problem I have been having on a certain model, so that ate up must of my Friday. I did manage to get out around 3:00 p.m., with my rain suit on. I went straight out of the chute, or maybe a little to the west, and started setting up rods in 50'. After reading all of the reports on the hot FF/diver rig action, I decided to go with two dipsy rods and one rigger. Besides, I had just spooled two brand new Sealines up with wire, and was anxious to try them out. I set the port diver rod up with a Mt. Dew spinny and some Green and chartreuse Atomik Fly, I don't follow the names too closely out 175'. The starboard dipsy got my hot color from, last year, the white with green dots spinny and a Green and blue Atomik fly out 150'. I can't remember what Moonshine spoon I had on but I think it was probably the Magnum dark blue spoon with green glow center and a ladder back. I was using a green shorts regular spoon for my slider, and my rigger ball was set at 50' as soon as I was in 55'. I went fishless for the first 30 minutes, but then the Mt. Dew diver rod started jumping around, and I landed a cute little 24" steelhead and promptly released him. Then I caught his brother about 30 minutes later, on the same rod and released him as well, over 180'. Right after I released that steelhead my starboard diver rod started screaming, and it was game on with a big king, for 5 minutes or so, until the hook popped out! That was in about 200'. I kept trolling north to about 250' and didn't see any more marks, so I turned the tub around and headed south again. Around 6:30 p.m. I finally nabbed a pretty nice, 28" steelhead, and decided to box him, on the same mt. dew diver rod. 3 for 4 @ the moment, so I am feeling fairly good, even though the missed king was really gnawing at me. Still running the same program of spoons and flashers, but no action on the rigger yet. Then I hear that telltale sound of drag screaming out of my starboard dipsy, and grabbed the rod! "Please, just stay hooked this time", I said to myself. It did, and a nice fat 25 pound male king came to the net! I looked at my phone, and it was 7:15. Fish number two in the box, and the rain had finally stopped, too. The wind was also starting to die down. That fish hit in 160'. I kept aiming for the breakwater and in about 120' I heard a weird noise, and turned to see my rigger rod standing straight up. Upon further inspection, the slider spoon had been eaten off, right at the end of the slider leader. That left me with no more green shorts spoons, as I had also lost one last weekend and I decided I had better tie this leader up with tougher line than the 15 pound flurocarbon I had been using on my sliders up until that point! I set the rigger back down to 50' and added the smaller Bad Toad spoon to the slider, and kept heading toward shore. i had just turned the lights on, and the sun was just starting to set, when I saw the rigger get pounded again. I grabbed the rod and reeled fast until I felt the weight of the fish, and slammed the hooks home. Then line started screaming off of my old sealine at a rapid rate, for about 330'. Perfect! I put the rod in a holder, reeled in both diver rods, turned the boat so I was going with the waves, and threw the engine into idle. This fish made it easy for me to get the net on it. By the time I finally got all organized, everything out of the way, and the fish cranked to the back of the boat, she was quite exhausted, and slid right into the net. I called it a night, and headed into the Cove, with a pair of 25's and a nice steely. Not too bad by myself in the rain. That night my buddy Captain Tim Green arrived at the room with his little 13 year old stepson, Dillon. We all set out the next morning in the rain, and set up the spread. The waves were pretty small, but everyone was getting nice and wet in my open bow boat. We finally started seeing fish in about 180'-220', and that is where we stayed all morning, doing circles. Dillon had a blast catching all of our fish, too bad they were all cohos and steelhead, with a handful of small skippy kings thrown in. We did equally well on the 10 color leadcore with spoons as we did on the wires and divers. I think we actually caught more quality fish on the cores, but Dillon had a hard time landing some of the bigger steelies, and we lost about three that looked about in the 10 pound range. We ended up with 3 big steelies and two nice eater cohos in the box, lost about that many, and had an action packed, but no big king morning. Oh yeah, we did have one big slob come up and break off a diver, only to have it tangle up with the copper line later, so I got back the hardware, anyways. We came back in around 2:00 p.m. and filleted fish at the Cove On Sunday I decided to to try the off-shore bite and trolled out to about 504' without moving a rod. I turned around and headed south, and caught a steelie at the 400' mark, but just kept going, because I wanted kings. My friend Shawn Burr texted me that they were seeing kings in 180' so that's where I was heading. I popped another steelhead at the 270' mark and started seeing more boats here. I started doing circles from 270' to 250', and lost three bigger fish on the mt. dew sd and fly, until a big king stole it and my diver. Ended up catching a nice 10 pound coho, 3 steelhead, 2 skippy kings, and a king of about 10 pounds. Kept the bigger king, the coho, and a 6 pound steelhead, because i knew I had to quit early yesterday arolund 5: p.m. to make it to my buddy Carl Bish's daughter Rachael's graduation party. I caught the bigger king and the coho on downrigger slider spoons set up at 80' down over 180'. Whew, report over. Pictures coming once I send them from my phone.

Nicely done, sir!

Sweet, can't wait to get up there today!

Great report and really nice work. Looks like the diver/ff bite is really starting to take off for the kings!

I caught a 14 pound 4 ounce Brown out of Ontario this spring, and the general rule of thumb among my buddies was that it should be at least 15 pounds from Ontario to get it mounted, so I missed it by 12 ounces!!

Nice browns!!

Great work, and nice limit of salmon!

I will still take those reels if you want to get back to me!

Great work, nice to hear you are scoring on some kings! Is the water finally setting up, I wonder?

Good job, man!