Eagles by the dozen perched in the tops of old growth cedars that clung tenaciously to bare rocks. Their boughs sweeping to the edge of the high water mark. The jagged cliffs and pinnacles on the shore virtually assured that the near shore waters would be teeming with lingcod and rockfish. But our quarry was salmon. We began slow trolling close to the rock face on the south side of Work Channel.
Chinook here tend to stay close to the surface.
The Parry's fishmaster told us to fish with ten to twenty pulls of line. The four other Parry skiffs were the only other boats in sight. Fish With the Eagles Expectation slowly turned to pessimism as we trolled unsuccessfully for two hours. The eagles, sitting still as totems, stared at us with disdain. Unlike us, they had no trouble locating fish, nor catching them.