Finally got Jim offshore… only his third trip since we bought the boat in October ‘05. Headed towards the Scarp and dropped lines in at 7:30 in 120’. One king right off the bat, and then a perfect teaser bite from a 10lb. dolphin. She went right at the squid chain, slammed the top of the water and switched right to the Ilander trailing it. Released one more king, and then nothing until we made it the ten miles or so to the ledge.
The bite was pretty slow, but we did manage to boat everything we hooked. Lots of scattered weeds, which did try to form up into a line towards lunchtime. The new teaser reel worked great… we ran 7 lines (including a downrigger) plus three teasers, and didn’t have a tangle once, including a tripleheader on dolphin (a good crew helped.) Saw the smallest sailfish in the world free-jumping about twenty times, and saw a big blue do the same… neither were hungry, apparently. Also saw a monster bull under a pallet with a few tripletails and tried four times to entice him to bite with no success. Tagged our first dolphin for Don Hammond.
It was a great day, even if the bite wasn’t… grilled cheeseburgers for lunch, and would’ve fileted a small dolphin for sandwiches if that was legal, which it isn’t, so we didn’t. Ended up with four gaffers, two slingers, two kings and a tagged peanut.
There probably should have been a smiley behind that statement… I think that it’s technically illegal to clean any fish offshore, but most everyone does it, particularly if they’re not anywhere near the limit. Not that we did, or anything…
I haven’t had time to check into it, but I was told that you could clean keep so much fish per person at sea providing that you had means to cook it. I want to say 1 lb per person or something. Like I said, I don’t know that to be 100% and I just heard via word of mouth.
Sorry I couldn’t go. Glad you got some fish. It’s hard to imagine that it is already time for the bite to slow way down. Where does the time go. Have fun this morning (Sat) with the renters!
By the time we had the idea of pulling up to the pallet and chunking, he was nowhere to be found… we were hoping to free gaff one of the tripletails that were hanging around, but they didn’t cooperate either. (We didn’t have an SKA special 12’ gaff on board, unfortunately.)
The bull was neat to watch… he would jet around each time we passed, and we just knew he was gonna hit something… better luck next time.
The sailfish was hilarious… I swear he didn’t weigh 10 lbs., and might’ve been closer to five. He just kept jumping like he was insane, and I guess wore himself out.
Going tomorrow AM to get my final certification dives… then I’ll be ready for these dog days of summer.
If you get those dives in on sunday, then you will be ready to go and knock some good fish out this coming week. We have been getting some great fish. Call me if you can get some days off.
