Playmaker – White Marlin, Tuna, and Dolphin…9/23

[MAKO19]

Capt. Scott had a few colleagues in town on Wednesday so we decided to dust the cob webs off the Playmaker and try to put these guys on some meat and take advantage of this beautiful forecast before the next blow rolls through just in time for the weekend.

The water where we have been catching is still sliding south so we opted to run even further to the south and start in 30 fathoms around the Hot Dog. There was nothing but Falsies in the area which made it hard to keep the spread out and 68 degree water that was nice and blue but just a little bit on the colder side of what we were looking for. So we picked up and ran further off to 40 fathoms and found a nice little break and we hammered the area. Almost as soon as we got the spread out we had a triple header on. The fish ended up being a nice White and 2 Yellowfin. We ended up jumping off the White and boating 1 of 2 on the tuna. Both tuna ate skirted ballyhoo on wire intended for Wahoo and the White ate a Green flasher Ilander/Ballyhoo on mono leader. We continued to work the area and were able to get 4 more White bites 3 of which came on the planer set-up with a skirted ballyhoo down deep on wire (again a bait intended for Wahoo). The fish would pop the rubber band off the planer line and then scream off line tricking us into thinking we got the Wahoo bite we were looking for. The leaders were coming back to the boat looking like a coiled up spring! Our last Marlin bite of the day we were able to capitalize on and got the fish to the boat for a few pictures and a clean release. The fish hit the planer bait on wire with a blue/pink Ilander and when we hooked up he screamed of line more aggressively than any Wahoo or Tuna we caught this year and he even crashed on the surface like Wahoo tend to do after they are hooked. The fish literally dumped better than ½ a spool of a 50 TW before we got him settled into the fight. The fish never jumped once and the whole fight we are thinking Wahoo but when we finally got color we realized it was a Marlin! It wasn’t meant to be today for the Wahoo but we did manage to put a little catch together for the guests and also added one more real nice gaffer Dolphin on a naked spilt bill behind the dredge from under a weed patch while trolling toward home.

Total for the day was:

1 for 5 on Whites
1 for 2 on Yellowfin
2 for 3 on Dolphin

The water on the 40 was gorgeous at 75 degrees with only scattered weed that was not a big problem to deal with.

[JIG JERK]

Its always a good day when you catch a marlin. Thanks for the report.

[MAKO19]

Its always a good day when you catch a marlin. Thanks for the report.

Yeah. I guess every meat fishermen gets lucky now and again. hahaha!