I was on the fence all week about taking the boat out Sunday (fiancee’s family was in town for the weekend), but I fueled up Friday just in case. Sometime Saturday morning my buddy talked me in to heading out there, so I got a last minute crew put together and made the call to push out early Sunday. I had one guy that hadn’t ever been offshore (Jesse), one guy that has been missing it for over a decade (Adam), one that was still fairly new but catching on really quickly (Justin), and one guy that I grew up fishing with that really helps me run everything out there (John).
We pushed off right around 4am and had a slightly rough ride on the way out – barked the engines 3 times (first time for everything!) and decided maybe 26 kts was a bit fast for conditions. Old girl handled it beautifully, though, landing surprisingly softly every time. I’m consistently blown away at how well that cat runs through sloppy seas at speed. We didn’t have lines in nearly as early as I had hoped, but I’m not sure how much it would have mattered anyway. Temp slowly and steadily climbed to 78 degrees, without a sign of the temp break we were looking for.
We finally decided to put lines in around 180’, and the fishing started out slowly. Spent a good part of the morning picking at slingers with a few gaffers mixed in. We lost more than we boated at first, many of which were due to crew error. We knocked the rust off by around noon and were having better success actually getting the fish in the box, but the bite was still slow. I made the call to troll towards the 226 hole and see if we could find something around there.
A while later, one of the lines snaps out of the rigger, and we’ve got a dolphin on. I was the first there, so I pick it up and start bringing it in. Very soon after, there’s another snap and some singing drag – double up! Adam gets the other and the rest of the crew starts clearing rods. At this point everyone is working much better together, and things are starting to go fairly smoothly. Adam’s f
Thanks guys! I just checked out some of the video from the trip and it got my heart racing again – I’ll try to get them uploaded as soon as possible. I checked my LJFL measurement against some calculators and charts, and it looks like that was around a 65 lb fish! Sounds like the billfish bite was hot last weekend from reading all of these posts on here!
2000 Sportcraft Sport Cat 255 - “Morning Bite”
Wilderness Systems Tarpon 160
Thanks! Yeah, I emailed her yesterday and got the info that she needed this morning. She was extremely responsive and very helpful. I can’t wait to check the certificate out!
2000 Sportcraft Sport Cat 255 - “Morning Bite”
Wilderness Systems Tarpon 160
Thanks! Yeah, I emailed her yesterday and got the info that she needed this morning. She was extremely responsive and very helpful. I can’t wait to check the certificate out!
