Squid Fishing Newbie - Tacoma

[thomco]

I stopped by one of the pier on Friday night on my way home because I could tell that there were several people squid fishing. I figured that I would see if I could find out some information.

Boy was I wrong! After about twenty minutes of walking around just watching and observing, I felt like a butcher at a PETA convention.

We were luckier than that. We visited the Vashon pier twice last week. The first time, no one spoke English. They seemed indifferent to our presence, but we didn't feel unwelcome. My daughter, wanted to look at the squid, and one woman was friendly with her - let her pickup squid from her bucket. Eventually, when we left she offered one squid to my daughter.



The next day we stopped again. This time there were several English speaking folks, including my neighbor. So I chatted with him about squid fishing for about 15 minutes. He let both my daughter and I cast the line and reel in a squid. Maybe you'll have more luck if you brought your daughter along <img src='http://www.squidfish.net/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':ink' />

Now for the lures, I saw all kinds but I could not tell the details on them because I did not want to get that close, but I did see that some were using two and three of them on their line. Also some of the guys had corkies at the top of their set up that were free floating on their line (I am not sure what they are for, possibly to be able to see where their line was?).

The type of lure they used was a [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigging"]jig[/url]. My friend's jig was glow-in-the-dark, and looked like [url="http://tinyurl.com/ydq76f2"]this on amazon[/url]

The technique that seemed to be used the most was; was the person would throw out his lure about fifteen feet or so from the dock and let the reel free wheel for a second or two (I am not sure on how deep they were fishing, the one guy that did not seem to mind me being there did not speak a lick of English and he just kept smiling at me and nodding his head) But everyone just seem to let their line setting and then they would pull it up, and then let it settle again. Some were pulling (jerking) pretty hard, and some seem to just pull up in a swift but smoothly long pull.



I don’t know how you can tell if you have a squid on, but it seemed that once you had one on, all you had to do is make sure you kept your tip up and the line tight. I did see quite a few squid being caught.

Thats a good description of the casting and jigging. I was instructed to gently move the pole up and down rather than jerk. I the upward motion, it was quite obvious when there was a squid on the jig.

I am also still at a loss on how to clean a squid. I have not had the time but I am sure there is someone out there that will be glad to show me, and I am going to search the web some more to see if I can find a “how to” video.

There are plenty of video online if you google "squid cleaning". My daughter found [url="http://how2heroes.com/videos/techniques/how-to-clean-squid"]this one[/url] which we found very useful. We cleaned our two squid and sautéed the calamari ring in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

I still do not know what the limits are here in Washington State or what kind of license that you need?

I just found the [url="http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/squid/index.htm"]Washington State Fish and Wildlife Squid Website[/url]. I haven't read it yet, but it looks like a lot of good info for the newbie, including things like gear, technique, rules and regulations According to the site, daily catch limit is 5qts or 10 lbs.



Have fun!