It was an awesome, perhaps disturbing, sight. Possession Bar on Sunday, May 1, opening day of our in-Sound lingcod season, crawling with recreational fishing boats of every description. A lot of boats. Somewhere between 100 and 200 boats, depending on who was doing the counting.
The next day, a work day, there were still 35-plus boats on the bar, all of them looking for the toothy, ugly fish which up until recently constituted only a minor fishing season.
“It looked like one of our salmon openers out there,” said Gary Krein, owner/skipper of All Star Charters in Everett.
“Those fish can’t take that kind of pounding and still survive,” said a caller that week, an angler preferring to remain anonymous but who is known as the best lingcod fisherman in the area. A 40-year veteran of the ling wars who keeps just a handful of the dozens of fish he hooks during the short season.
The heavy pressure was understandable, Krein said, considering lings were about the only game in town, that the season opened on a weekend day, and that there are ever-increasing numbers of anglers becoming ever more knowledgeable about how and where to catch the fish. But he has his doubts, he said, that pressure this heavy can be sustained while still protecting the resource.
“The pressure this year has been at least twice that of last season,” said Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife regional fisheries manager Curt Kraemer at the Mill Creek office. “The Internet chat rooms have been full of ling talk the past two years or so, and it looks like this fishery, as others, could become a victim of its own success.”
Heavy fishing could produce a situation of declining catches (lings are not stupid) and the perception that there aren’t any fish around when, biologically, the population is sound, Kraemer said.
So should we all be concerned enough to start lobbying for closed seasons? Probably not, according to two state groundfish biologists – Greg Bargmann and Wayne Palsson – who, between them, know most of what there is to know about Puget Sound lings.
About 20 years ago, the state’s ling population crashed, perhaps due to recreational and commercial overfishing, combined with other factors, the biologists said. The department responded with a five-year moratorium on lings, then reopened with shortened, six-week seasons and a severely reduced one-fish limit.
The regimen has worked, according to the biologists.
“The slot limit (only lings between 26 and 40 inches in length are legal) and the short seasons seem to be working,” Bargmann said. “We had a really good spawn three or four years ago – fish which now are just legal or just under – and we’re seeing a lot of too-small fish being released.”
“We may have to tweak the regulations some time in the future if the pressure becomes too heavy,” Palsson said, “but right now I’m comfortable with the conservative program, and happy with what appears to be a very robust population. The season is timed so that the spawn is over and most fish off the nests before fishing starts.”
Bargmann said lings are not as slow-growing as, say, some rockfish, and are actually one of the state’s most resilient bottomfish species. “A 15- or 20-year old ling is an old fish,” he said. “But it’s still very important to observe the regulations – to release small fish carefully without wallowing them around in the bottom of the boat, and to resist the temptation to keep one of the big females (most really big lings are females), the fish which are crucial to repopulation.”
Palsson said catch figures and diving surveys in Western Washington show an increase in lings, both in fished areas and in marine reserves. The catch rate was about one fish for every 10 anglers in 1982, he said, and jumped to one for every three fishermen by 2003, the last year for which statistics are available.
Palsson suggests rigging with 6/0 or 7/0 hooks, large enough to cut down the incidental bycatch of scarce rockfish. He uses horse herring on a two-hook setup, usually with the rear hook trailing.
Krein uses 7-foot Shakespeare one-piece, number 1101 Ugly Stik rods on his charter, with Ambassadeur 6500 reels. He loads with 50-pound test Tuf Line, one of the Spectra low-diameter lines, followed with a 3/0 or 4/0 barrel swivel, about a foot of lighter, 30-pound monofilament, then a 3- or 4-ounce crescent or ball sinker, 3 feet of 50-pound leader, and two 6/0 hooks. When he baits with large herring, the rear hook usually trails.
Krein said the short piece of lighter leader allows him to break off when snagged on bottom structure, without losing a big chunk of expensive line. A piece of light leader rigged as a dropper setup would work equally well, he said.
Krein likes herring as well, but said jigs are also very effective for lings. He likes any of the 3- or 4-ounce lead head curly-tailed soft jigs, preferably in “motor oil” or other shades of brown. Storm makes a relatively new line of soft lures called Swimming Jigs which are becoming very popular, and Krein likes the rainbow trout pattern.
Ling fishing technique is simple – drop your rig to bottom, reel up a turn or two, and drift. Keep touching, however, so you know you’re just off bottom, and keep a tight line. Lings are often found in rocky structure, or along sharply rising walls, and it’s easy to lose a lot of gear if you’re not paying attention.
Krein said Possession Bar has many small rock piles, hollows, dips and depressions which hold lings, but that everyone must do their own searching. The drop-offs on either side of the bar are good, and the artificial reef (a sunken ferry) 300 or 400 yards due west of the Possession Point buoy holds fish. The Scatchet Head buoy is well known, but heavily over-fished. Others include the shoreline north of the underwater park in Edmonds, and other rocky habitat north of there; Double Bluff; the artificial reefs at Onomad Point (west side of Camano Island) and just south of Hat Island (along the 50 to 60-foot line); isolated spots along the west side of Hat Island and off the southwest corner of Camano Island; the small islets near the west entrance to Deception Pass; Biz Point and Sares Head to the north of Deception Pass; a pinnacle a quarter-mile due south of the Keystone Ferry terminal; isolated rocks and humps along most of the west side of Whidbey Island; and most marina rock jetties.
The biologists said the majority of lings will come not from large concentrations in a particular area, but from small pockets of suitable habitat, holding a few fish each. That means grabbing a chart and looking for promising structure.
Legal lings, within the slot limit, will weigh 9 or 10 pounds, up to 25 or 26 pounds max, with most going 10 to 20 pounds.
Lings will inhabit a wide range of depths, biologist Bargmann said, but seem to prefer the range between 30-200 feet. That necessitates being prepared with heavier jigs or more weight for different depths, tidal run and wind conditions. Weights of 5 or 6 ounces are more common in the San Juans, while ocean anglers on the coast often use 10 to 20 ounces, or more.
Holiday Market Sports, in Burlington, is sort of the unofficial fishing headquarters for the southern San Juan Islands, and Bob Ferber there said there’s a huge amount of ling-holding habitat in the islands. Areas close to either the Cornet Bay public launch (east side of Whidbey, just south of Deception Pass) or Washington Park (west of Anacortes), with gas prices being what they are, include Burrows Island, Blakely Island, Bird Rock and James Island, Ferber said. Good areas a little farther out are the deeps off Point Lawrence, the north side of Orcas Island, and the west side of San Juan Island.
Ferber said a lot of his customers fish herring, or tip various jigs with chunks of squid or octopus, plus a squirt of bait oil. Squirmin’ Worms, curly tails and scampi all work, in glow white, root beer, or motor oil, and the Storm Swimming Jigs are popular with San Juan anglers too, in the greenling patterns, white or chartreuse.
Lastly, ocean bottomfish charters out of Westport are quick and convenient. Most run combination trips for almost automatic limits of black rockfish early in the day, then a shot at lings on the way back, usually with at least fair success. Prices run somewhere in the $85 range, and a list of charters doing bottomfish can be had from the Westport Chamber of Commerce (1-800-562-0151).
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