Westport offers excellent fishing

Dan Masters
Yakima Herald Republic
June 8, 1985

During a recent bottom fishing trip to Westport, the first day was spent with Ocean Charters pursuing sea bass in shallow water. The opportunity to cast to these husky fighters on the surface using bass gear is a fisherman’s dream. The action in casting to schools of hundreds of surface feeding fish was simply fantastic and resulted in one more avid sea bass angler. But the Westport area also offers some excellent angling for several deep water species of rockfish. So the second day was spent with Neptune Charter’s deep water rockfishing expert, Scott Lafferty.

During 1983, Scott chartered out 191 trips for rockfish, and every trip resulted in limits of 15 rockfish per person as well as some healthy lingcod. What makes this even more astonishing is that he frequently took out one trip in the morning and another trip in the afternoon. For deep-water rockfishing on the Washington coast, Scott is probably the expert.

Rockfish are structure fish much like the freshwater largemouth bass. The fish establish home areas of structure like reefs or rockpiles and can pretty regularly be found there again. For the last six years, Scott has been doing just that as he has explored the areas out of Westport for reefs that hold rockfish. Using a lot of electronic equipment enables him to return easily to hundreds of reefs that regularly hold schools of rockfish. That normally means lots of fish for anglers as he has a wide variety of reefs to investigate for angling action.

Scott used two different graph recorders that operate at two different frequencies and give a slightly different reading. Between the two machines, he can pretty much tell what type of fish we were finding on the reefs. He also had two Loran C units to find his reefs again. By jotting down the numbers of reefs in a black book, he can use the navigational aid to put himself within 40 feet of the same spot. With his more expensive unit, he can reposition the boat within 6 feet of the reef’s location. During six years of guiding, he has put the locations of every reef located during each day on a computer. That way, he can pretty well determine how often the schools of fish are found at each reef. With that information, he can be pretty certain of taking out anglers to reefs that will have schools of fish present.

Still, when he arrived at each reef, he would slowly circle the area to locate the schools of fish on his fish locators before lining the boat up for a drift across the reef. By the time we reached our first destination, some of the passengers were mumbling about China being just around the bend. But the fast action at that first stop resulted in several doubles and even some triples coming aboard, and the chatter stopped.

Because most of the fishing was in at least 100 feet of water, ocean rods and reels with 12-ounce sinkers were the standard gear. The line was imported from Japan, because he was unable to find a domestically made fishing line that was as soft as he preferred. The 60- pound test Yama Line is about three times as expensive as domestic lines, but well worth the price, according to Scott. Another alternative line for deep- water use would be braided Dacron, which has no stretch, making it easier to set the hook in deep water. But Scott warned that the line can also be difficult for beginning anglers because it doesn’t stretch. When a big fish runs, it is common for the rod to come slamming against the boat rail. With Dacron lines; a sudden Impact like that could very well tear the lure fight out of the fish’s mouth.

Scott ties most of his own lures on large saltwater hooks. The flies are tied of red nylon unraveled cord over some white nylon unraveled cord and tied with heavy nylon to form a shrimplike fly. The obvious reason for these very strongly tied flies is durability. In his business, Scott wants a lure that will land lots of fish before it has to be replaced. The closest thing sold commercially is a three-fly rigging sold by the Danco Co. as shrimp-lure rigs.

Although the unbaited flies caught fish, I decided to sweeten up my shrimp imitation by putting on a drop of Mike’s Shrimp Oil on the lure. Because they were supposed to be imitating shrimp, it made sense to have it smell like shrimp, too. I can’t be certain how much the scent helped, but the people who used it seemed to get into more fish than the people who didn’t use it.

Although Scott had told me that I probably wouldn’t be able to use my light bass rod and reel on the trip, the currents were light, and I was able to reach bottom with a 3-ounce jig. The result was some fine action.