Sikeu up

Sikeu up. These days, most anglers in search of summer Chinook fish The Caves with downrigger gear, starting as shallow as 20 to 30 feet first at first light and working deeper as the morning progresses. This is another place where motor-mooching or slow-trolling with plug-cut herring near the bottom can pay off, but trolling hardware also catches its share of 10- to 25-pound summer kings. Farther east, although places like Little Mussolini, the Coal Mines, Codfish Bay and Pillar Point are all productive fishing spots in their own right, many anglers—myself included—often treat this entire stretch of water as one long trolling path, working from west-to-east on an incoming tide and east-to-west as the tide goes out.

If you find a good concentration of bait, mark a few salmon or hook-up in one location, circle around and make two or three passes through that area before continuing your troll along the beach. Lines of floating kelp and debris may determine where you fish to some extent, but if possible stay close to the beach—in 70 feet of water or less—the first hour or two of the day, working your way out to 130 feet or so by the middle of the morning. This entire stretch of water is the traditional haunt of motor-moochers, and a few still fish it that way, but trolling downriggers is what most folks do to catch their kings here these days.