How to catch four fish at once!

As I was looking through my blog feed the other day I saw that another local blogger, Ian the Rambling Fisherman wrote a post about herring being caught off shore about an hour from where we live. We have never jigged for herring but it looked like fun and a great way to get some bait together for upcoming halibut adventures. We pieced together information from The Rambling Fisherman as well as some location tips from a guy Chris works with and we set out for Nanaimo. We picked up some herring jigs which I had never seen before. A leader with about ten small hooks spaced down the length of the line is all that was needed. The day was a typical Canadian West Coast day, overcast, drizzling with a mild wind. At the first location we tried there were a few commercial herring boats just a little way off shore but the fish were too far out for us to reach casting off the shore. We moved to a different location that consisted of some rocky ledges with a deep drop off and kelp beds. First cast in and Chris had a shiny little fellow on his line. I cast in and came up with two on my line. I was so excited to pull in these cute little fish, you would have thought I had a 20lb salmon on my line! For the next half hour almost every cast yielded us at least one herring. I quickly discovered that when I felt a tug if I reeled in very slowly I would get multiple bites on the line. The most I had on at once was five, here is a picture of me with a quadruple catch!
We caught a few dozen herring during the first half hour and then two things happened to cut out fishing short. First was a pair of humongous sea lions frolicking jut in front of our fishing grounds. They were giving us a fantastic synchronized swimming display that had us captivated but probably sent many of the herring skittering away. Next came along a couple of scuba divers scouting the location for a future diving class. After they swam directly through where we were fishing we did not catch another fish. The day was beginning the darken and we were soaking wet so we took our cooler of herring and headed for home. This was a strange and fun fishing adventure and I am looking forward to trying it again next season.