I got an invite on a 34 Freeman out of Edisto the day after Memorial Day, friend has been trying to get me on this boat for quite a while. I don’t get much blue water time, so this was a big experience for me.
Dock at 3:30, leave at 4, lines in about 6:30 at the ledge
Two phins right off, then the early bite seemed to quit. pushed out through small and scattered weeds, flying fish and surface activity were slow to nonexistent
Trolled out to 400’ without any action, decided to run out closer to a storm cell and try some 600’ blueline/snowy numbers, realize after the first rig was down that we didn’t have the cable for the electric reel… s***! took turns cranking 8lbs of lead back up on a 3mph drift. got bit on the 2nd drift, missed the spot on the 3rd drift, storm was getting close and kicking things up, last drift got hit and then the manual setting on the reel failed and would no longer engage. strip a bunch of line off a 50w, tie the 1000’ of line we’re drifting with onto that reel, hand crank a stud blueline, head back in closer to the ledge.
trolled a few patches of weeds without a knockdown, pretty quiet on the radio too. head back to ledge and start seeing surface activity. tuna clearing the water. put out the tuna and wahoo portions of the spread and drag at 11kts, on the action again.
wahoo skying on the long skirted ballyhoo, clips start popping, DTX’s get whacked, the tuna feather doing its thing, cedar plug too. wahoo over the rail, then blackfin, then false albacore, then wahoo, dolphin, bonito, albie, dolphin, wahoo, blackfin, wahoo… high fives and raw water washdown for all…
second blackfin was twice that size, box looking nice now. getting kind of late, need to move in shallower and hit some easy bottom numbers
jig 90’ live bottom and add 20+ beeliners, a couple triggers, and that sand tile from the other thread to the box.
haul ass, scrub boat, cut fish, clean self, sleep hard, eat sushi, poke bowls, etc, for the rest of the week.
my sushi rolling game needs work, i’m new at this
Shout out to Raddaddy for captaining and putting me (and 2 others) on our first wahoo!
