After fishing a long but fruitful day on 7/17, we decided to take a double header and head back out on 7/18. We left the dock around 5:30am and headed out about 55 miles. A friend of the family, his son, and his son’s friend came along with my good buddy Joe. They really wanted to catch a tuna, but I had already let them know that would be a long shot and not to get their hopes up. We got the spread out and running around 8:00 and had a our first fish in the boat 10 minutes later. Guess what it was…a 15lb blackfin tuna! They were absolutely thrilled, and I could tell this would be a day of epic proportions.
We continued to fish out into deeper water and finally picked up our first dolphin in 250’. We found a little grass out there, but nothing was very stacked up. We ran across several big schools of dolphin and at one point had 3 on at once! We picked at them for the next 2 hours and had a solid 4 dolphin in the boat when our luck changed.
And boy, did our luck change…the Penn 50TW started singing and 250yds back what did we see flying through the air? A sailfish! Our first billfish for the season was hooked up and giving us hell. We got her to the boat 25 minutes later and she was safely unhooked, revived, and released. It was an absolutely beautiful fish and will be a solid memory for my friends for a long, long time.
The day didn’t slow down. We continued to pick up solid dolphin, only losing 1 at the boat all day. By the end of the day, we had 10 dolphin and 1 tuna in the box. That is plenty for us and we packed it up and headed back around 3:30. All in all, it was the best day out there in a long, long time. The only