Tuesday, May 28: Short version: 15 mahi nice day
At the time it seemed like a pretty bad day, but things could be worse as I would find out on the following Saturday. We caught about 15 mahi on a smooth day with a nice weed line. They were mostly peanuts and a couple small gaffers. We had unwittingly followed a weed line 25 miles beyond the 100 fathom line. There was just one bait they were hitting: a blue 3 bird chain with a blue Williamson swimming ballyhoo combo. I had a similar setup on the other side that was pink and left untouched. For about two hours, we could not get both outrigger baits out on the port side due to strikes, hooked fish and rerigging. We lost a few decent sized cows due to hooks breaking(4-5). It was a lot of action, but almost all peanuts: One of them 8”. On the way in we saw a swirl and a fin (250ft). I pulled the boat off plane and swerved over there. A very big marlin tail came out of the water 30yards from the boat. Big dead drag bait was out in about 15 seconds, but no love. Thought it was such a bad day, but somehow we had about 25 lbs of meat in the cooler. Maybe not so bad.
The following Saturday: Short version: Jeez what a bad day on beautiful water, two mahi.
I was determined to avoid the peanut problem, so I switched to mostly bigger baits. Super smooth waters came to a nice rip and massive section of weeds. We struggled, lost a couple small gaffers, lost my dredge along with the reel and boom, and caught two small slingers. We really struggled with the weeds, as we could never find a clean line. Didn’t know what to do. In hindsight, I feel we should’ve fished in more where the water was rougher and the weeds more broken. We trolled homeward into 130 feet and lost a large slinger at the gaff and had a sail come into the spread, but being brain dead from a late night of rigging, it did not occur to me that the sail was on the dredge that was out of sight.
Friday June 7th: short version: epic day, 11 nice mahi, 4 skipjack, and a ship ton to eat.