Lingcod Fishing in Friday Harbor, WA

Lingcod live here year round. They are resident ambush predators holding tight to rock, so the question in Friday Harbor is never whether they are present, it is whether you can get a jig to sit where they are. We cover 21 spots that hold them, including Belle Rock, Eagle Point, Cattle Point on San Juan Island, Colville Island and Boundary Pass, Iceberg Point off Lopez Island, East Point at Saturna Island, and the offshore humps at Hein Bank and Alden Bank.

Two windows stand out. December through February brings dense spawning aggregations into nearshore rocky habitat, and that is the sharpest peak of the year. May through August gives you a broader plateau, with males guarding nests on rocky reefs, post spawn females recovering shallower, and fish feeding hard on summer bait. Fall dips slightly before the pre spawn build starts again.

Current runs the show. Fish the slack. From dead slack up to about 0.5 knots you can hold bottom and your gear hangs where you put it, and by roughly 2.5 knots the spot is unfishable. Plan your day around the hour either side of high or low water. Jigging is the dominant method, dropping metal jigs, leadhead jigs with swimbaits, or bucktail jigs to pinnacles and rock in 40 to 120 feet. Drift live greenling, herring or sanddabs near bottom over reefs, or mooch whole and cut plug herring through the channels.