Fishermen of all ages lined up elbow-to-elbow Citizen's Dock in Crescent City Harbor last week, jigging for Pacific herring that make their annual spawning migration into the harbor every year.  This year, the silver-sided baitfish arrived at Crescent City Harbor on Saturday, February 11.  Full 6-gallon buckets of herring averaging between 8 and 10 inches were the rule, and many large ice chests were filled to capacity as well.

The herring, which normally can be caught from the jetties lining the boat-launch facility and at the entrance to the boat basin, were caught in the nook that lined Citizen's Dock and the section that meets the dock at a 90-degree angle.  Sea lions had corralled the baitfish into this area, making it easy pickings for anglers who were jigging sabiki rigs.

Some anglers will pickle or can their herring, but most fishermen are catching as many of the baitfish as they are able, to be used later in the season for lingcod bait.

A herring with all of its scales preserved is nothing less than lingcod candy, and there is nothing more rewarding than catching a large fish on a baitfish that you've caught yourself.

"I've got all the herring I am going to need for the entire season now," said Captain Jim Bithell, owner of Charthouse Sportfishing on Wednesday. Bithell, one of the many 6-pack charterboat captains had jigged all the herring he needed for 2017 in less than a week.

All you need to catch these scrappy baitfish is a freshwater rod between 7 and 8-1/2 feet long and a spinning reel loaded with 8 pound test.  To the end of your line, tie on a sabiki rig and then attach a lightweight sinker between 1/4 and 3/4 ounces.

Sabiki rigs come with 6 jigs attached.  It was common last week for anglers to bring up between 3 and 6 herring at a time.

Some sabiki rigs come with wings attached while others just come with small beads.  Last week it didn't seem to matter which type you used.  But generally I prefer the non-winged variety, the kind made by ZAK Tackle. However if your winged rigs are not getting bit, just clip the wings off with a pair of toenail clippers and you're good to go. Gamakatsu also makes excellent sabiki rigs as well.

If you want the best-looking herring for your lingcod, you will want to kill the baitfish instantly after they are caught, so that they do not lose any of their scales.  A scale on a herring is like an individual sparkling lure.

To insure that I have the best-looking bait, I always like to use a large, wide ice chest. I will layer the ice chest with 3 or 4 inches of ice, then spread a liberal amount of non-iodized salt of on top of the ice.  Keep performing this layering procedure until your ice chest is 3/4 full of this concoction.

The salt on the ice turns your ice chest into a flash freezer.  As soon as a herring hits this super ice-cold mixture, it will immediately stop wiggling. It is this wiggling that causes your herring to shake off their scales.

While most of these herring make excellent lingcod bait, they also make great salmon bait later in the season when used as cut-plug herring.  Why specifically cut-plug herring, you may ask yourself?

When you buy a tray of herring in the tackle store, the herring have been starved in their bait pens so that their gut cavities have as little bulge as possible, which makes them excellent whole salmon bait.

But when you cut-plug these corpulent herring with milt and roe spilling out, you are basically taking out the guts anyway, so these herring also work excellently as cut-plug salmon bait.

Another reason for being particular about keeping your herring as fresh as possible is that they also make excellent halibut bait when the Pacific halibut opener in May finally rolls around.

Nobody knows exactly how long these herring will be around - could be days - could be another week or two.  Last year, they were only in the harbor for about 5 days.

On Thursday last, folks were still hauling in the herring.

This year, you will need a California fishing license to fish for these herring off of Citizen's Dock, however there is no limit to the amount of herring you can catch.

Tight lines!

Larry Ellis, author, writer, columnist and photographer has had a 50-year passion for fishing in California and Oregon's saltwater and freshwater venues. He is a well-known writer for Oregon, Washington and California Fishing and Hunting News, Northwest Sportsman, California Sportsman and Pacific Coast Sportfishing. He currently writes monthly for Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine, and is the author of two books, "Plug Fishing for Salmon" and "Buoy 10, the World's Largest Salmon Run."  Both books can be bought from Amato Publications (amatobooks.com), Amazon and eBay. Ellis particularly loves living in his hometown of Brookings, Oregon - The heart of salmon country and gateway to fishing paradise.