WARNING! The following column contains images, videos, descriptions and language that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
38 MILES WEST OF ILWACO, Wash. – An albacore tuna in crystal-clear blue water is one of nature’s many magnificent spectacles; fast, agile and sleek fish with silvery sides and long wing-like fins splashing and dashing hither and yon.
The sight is just as pleasant when its loins reach the dinner table and family/guests savor their share of chickens of the sea.
But the journey from sea to feast is far from either pleasant memory.
It’s expensive before it starts – well beyond the cost of a boat seaworthy enough to make a 50-100 mile round trip. Harbor fuel typically runs far more than that on the street. Rods, reels, live bait adds more.
Fishing live bait means a stop at the anchovy dock for a scoop or more of wigglers, which can run well north of a C-note and veteran skippers pay three to four figures to lease their own net pens for a season-full of wiggling lures.
Charters run with two qualified skippers aboard. They earn every penny they’re paid and deserve more.
They lead the fun…crossing the world’s most dangerous bar and hoping the sea beyond won’t nearly as hard on your teeth as the last one.
Then the boredom, the nap, the small talk, the constant pounding of the hull against towering waves, whitecaps or just a whisper across the glass as you finally doze off…
“Jumpers!”
You as well as the tuna; everyone jumps to their rods, impale hapless anchovies and begin the fray.Yes, bloody as you can possibly imagine. A landed tuna’s throat is immediately cut and the heart’s dying beats drain lifeblood from its body, preserving its full fresh flavor.
Within minutes, rods bend, sharp gaffs swing, maypoles are unraveled and fat albacore just trying to get their own dinner instead of be yours are drumming on a bloody deck worthy of a Halloween horror movie.
Yes, bloody as you can possibly imagine. A landed tuna’s throat is immediately cut to use the heart’s dying beats to drain lifeblood from its body and preserve its full fresh flavor.
The entertaining melee isn’t for the faint of heart. See for yourself (and turn up the sound!)
When the coffins won’t hold another silver football, chaos yields to calm. The hose comes out (actually after every bait stop), gear is stowed, and happily exhausted bodies of the survivors settle in for the long ride home and welcome sight of land.
This trip aboard Mike Colbach’s Shake N Bake yielded 38 tuna, weighing in at an average of more than 22 pounds, with the heaviest at 28 and change.
Colbach, a Portland lawyer who happily admits his tuna addiction (he stars in the video wearing trademark shorts and wielding a gaff as effectively as his legal chops) , said they were the largest of the season on his 43-foot Henriques.
And what a season! 2025 was a banner year for pelagic exotics off Oregon’s entire coast, with reports of abundant albacore from Brookings to the Columbia.
Colbach knew of a local commercial skipper with a crew using jackpoles 200 to 300 miles out to fling hundreds onto the deck each day.
(Incidentally, if you didn’t get a chance to fish and/or want to buy this year’s tuna, it’s still possible. Many, perhaps most, commercial boats flash freeze catches at sea. They’re in perfect condition and are typically sold in most ports.)
But that wasn’t the only unusual bounty from the sea.
Jessica Watson, marine resources policy project leader for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the usual number of occasional bluefin tuna were caught from a Pacific population that’s rebounded faster than expected.
But what really caught her attention were the reports of seven striped marlin up and down the coast, from the south to Garibaldi. Three came into Newport.
A marlin every few years is newsworthy, seven in one summer is astounding.
“It was a marlin-palooza,” Watson said.
And as if that isn’t enough shock and awe, google Sitka, Alaska, and tuna.
Anglers out of that far north fishing mecca found albacore within 30 miles for a few days and a skipjack tuna was speared by a diver inside the city’s harbor.
Watson said the only fish missing were opah, mahi mahi (dorado) and yellowfin, although those may have been caught without her knowledge.
Meanwhile, back at restoration efforts: Both the Nehalem and Trask hatcheries have kicked off wild coho broodstock collections like those that have been successful for steelhead.
All fish need to be caught in a river, either the North Fork Nehalem (only) for that hatchery and any Tillamook Bay tributary (not estuary or tidewater) for the Trask.
Biologists ask anglers keeping wild fish alive to avoid bringing in fresh salmon from the ocean with loose scales. They often don’t survive long enough to spawn.
Fish with a little color to them are preferred.
Contact either hatchery for more information.
Wild/hatchery banquet: There’s little doubt hatchery salmon and steelhead can not only get along, but even complement each other.
Witness successes on both the Clackamas and Sandy rivers, the pioneering runs of coho above Willamette Falls and a surprisingly immediate spread of Chinook into the upper Klamath River after three dams came down.
To help elevate that marriage, Hatchery & Wild Coexist will host a banquet on Dec. 6 in the Ilani Casino Hotel in Ridgefield, Wash.
Interest has been high, said Don New, an organization officer, and a good crowd is expected.
Early bird tickets are $75 through Friday evening, then only increase $10. Find them on Facebook (here, but be patient as the site makes sure you’re a valid catch).