Gig Harbor Fishing

Those that know me will not be surprised that I love to run plugs. I have in my arsenal several different colors but I have two favorites. One is, the old standby, Tomic 140, white with a pink head, everybody should have a couple of these.  The other is a two tone green, dark on top light on the bottom. This story is about the second.

In May, 2004 I did a trip up the west side of Vancouver Island with some guys. On the way up we stopped in  couple places one of which was Ucluelet. In Ucluelet there was a little tackle shop on the water. This place was great. Like all old tackle shops they had a lots of things that work for salmon but all the really good stuff was in the front by the counter. As used to be the case in many coastal shops there was a bucket with old plugs the commercial long line guys had used and discarded for a buck a piece or 5 for $4. These buckets can be a lot of fun to go through. The trick is to find the ones with teeth marks in them, those are the ones that really work. So I picked out a few that looked good including this goofy two toned green thing.

In June of that year I tied up the green one and a couple  others. Here is a short video I did on how to rig these plugs.

Up to this point I had had very little success catching June fish in the Gig Harbor area (White River Kings). The first time I ran this green plug it caught a nice 14lb Chinook. This plug has continued to be a consistent producer for me (especially in June). I had to call Tomic to get more made because I couldn’t find them in stores here. They advised me that this was not a color they did for the general public. It was a custom color they did for a long liner in Canada but they would make some for me. So I ordered a dozen. A couple years ago I ordered another dozen after the company changed. The colors are not an exact match but it still works well.

The moral of the story is “when you find something  that works use it!!!”.

Good Fishin' To Ya'

Kerry W Allen