Fishing in Pacific Northwest

[Tenedos]

We recently moved the boat to Seattle from San Francisco. On our trip from San Francisco to Ensenada and back last year we did catch some mackerels via trolling lines and cedar plugs.

Would a similar approach yield any result in Pacific Northwest? We don't want to obsess with fishing with a lot of specialized gear and techniques, just wondering if some simple approaches that used to work in short passages could also work here. We can try it out but before I get permits and my gear back into reasonable shape, I wanted to ask.

[Tenedos]

Any thoughts or tips on this?

[blinkerfluid]

What part of the PNW are you in? If you're thinking fishing Puget Sound, you'll only catch anything when the Salmon are running (late summer/fall); and you'll have to figure out which ones you're allowed to keep. You could bottom fish for starry flounder, but after catching a couple myself, I don't think I'd eat them. Rockfish are delicious, but they're closed in the sound, you'd have to go out to Neah Bay to keep them (which is what we would do). There is a 6 week long lingcod season in the spring in the Sound, and winter blackmouth can be a thing too if you put in the effort (which is not small). Unfortunately, you likely won't catch much in the sound with just simple trolling surface/shallow lures; only exception might be pink salmon when they're in (every other year, odd years I think).

If you're along the coast, you can catch Albacore in the summer along with Salmon Lingcod and Rockfish.

Good luck!

[alctel]

Guy above me covered it well but if you want to catch salmon, there are pretty strict rules and regs about what you can and can't keep - as already said, the only salmon that's around year around are the chinook (springs/kings depending if you are in BC or the US) and they are pretty heavily regulated. Also, outside of the period when they are running, you have to fish deep (200 foot or so) which involves downriggers.

You also have to go between 2 to 2.5 knots for most of the salmon species which means you have to 'try' to fish for them, it's not like the tropics where you can drop a line while shooting along at 6 knots.

Rockfish, Hali and Lingcod can be caught on the bottom in various places, but again are heavily regulated.

[Cheechako]

Crabbing is good and rewarding. Watch the areas and seasons. Hang a pot over the side in more remote areas where there are a lot of crab. If they are there you will have some in 1-2 hours.
Trolling with a herring or a silver lure can catch things. However, Salmon is the main thing. And downriggers are much easier as it's a depth thing. I have caught Mackerel near the ocean waters up here, but it's unusual.
You can put a herring on while anchored and put it over, you will catch anything from Ratfish, to Shark, to a Cod (various), Lingcod, to Flounder. But it's more entertainment than good eating unless you can get into enough Flounder or Ling.

[Lepke]

The way to catch salmon trolling is have your gear in the water by early twilight. As the sun comes up, the salmon go down. By sunrise you need a downrigger or planer. In bright sunlight, they're usually deep. They come up again as it gets dark. Same with Albacore. Bottom fish are caught on or near the bottom except when they're spawning.

[Tenedos]

Thanks all. Trying trolling on the surface did not yield any result. As many have already suggested, looks like we need to go deeper. So I decided to invest a bit. Got a dipsy diver (and braided line), dipsy snubber, flasher, and a bunch of spoons and squids. We will try to troll at some random depths (30 to however deep the dipsy can dive) and see the results!