It was Friday and so, as we have done for 13 years, my buddy Howard and I jumped on his new 33 Rampage to go offshore for the elusive yellowfin tuna. My good friend Capt Bob Cope joined us and we set off at 3 A.M. for the area of the 30 line. We arrived at the spot just as the light got good enough to see as we set out the lines and we threw our 9 line spread out and throttled down to 6.5 Kts. in very calm seas. As we trolled, we spoke to a couple of boats including Capt. John on the Hooked up and Andy on the Little Debby. We were all working in the same area and John had seen some small BFT so we slipped out to try to catch 1 since we can keep 1 per boat under 47" until mid September. We are out of GE Inlet and officially part of the northern zone. Of course, we found none but as we turned back to the direction i wanted to go, I spotted a "Dolphin Hotel" from the mini tower. That is a piece of flotsam, in this case one of those plastic orange and white drums that they use to block off my road as they tear up the neighborhood, that may hold these delicious fish. As we trolled by the structure, 2 dolphin hit and we decided to back up to the piece with bait and spinning rods, and have some fun. We did. Howie caught 10 on 1 -hand Quantum spinning outfits that he had just put on board that morning. After we beat them up, it was back to trolling. I beleve that we had about everything covered as far as selection goes. We had skipping and swimming hoos, including 1 down on wire on a z wing, splash bars of 2 different sizes, 2 birds with green machines, and a daisy chain or two as well as a cedar plug clipped down to the transom. Ah yes, variety is the spice of life. Until 11:30, we did not have a hit except for a 25 lb dolphin that we found in a very nice weed line inshore in 78 degree water.

Bob said that dolphin were nice but he wanted to "get the cockpit bloody with tuna".
Then at 11:45, as we were trolling down the sea which had built to 4-5 feet even though the weather swamis were telling us that the sea were 2 feet, I looked down at the E 120 digital sounder screen and there they were, huge red marks at 60 feet. I shouted down. "get ready ", and then, 4 fish climbed on. Quite a sight. Bob and Howie down in the cockpit and me on the tower trying to get down and clear lines while the sea tried to turn us sideways. They each caught the first fish which i leadered and gaffed, and then got another rod from a holder and caught that one! What a BLAST! High fives were everywhere and they cleared and reset all the lines while I swung the boat around to get back up sea since it was very sloppy fishing the trough. It took some time to get ready and get the blood washed off but we did get back and get back above the fish. Bob was all smiles but told me that we had to do it again since the boat was now clean. I turned back down the sea and as I looked back 6 or 7 rods went off. Same results but we only got a couple and as we trolled back up the sea, we hooked and lost 2 more. I turned and started down again and 7 rods folded again. This time we caught 5 and since we had plenty, we released some and ended up taking home 8 tuna and 13 dolphin.
Bob and I had to get a pic before we cleaned up the cockpit and Howie shot it for us.

You may see that the sea was a bit dicey but the fishing could not have been better. The tuna were small (25-40 lb.) but fun, and they do eat good as I am told since I don't eat fish. When we got back to the dock, I had to shoot one pic of the day's results from the tower just because.

We have been field testing the new Quantum Aruba reels that are in the picture. They are 30 wides with 2 speeds and dual drag. They handled the fish well and are going to be excellent reels when they are introduced.
It was a great day with great friends and we were on the way home by 1:00. That Rampage 33 really handles the sea well and the Raymarine A/P had us on the straight and narrow all the way home at 23 kts, but that was in the "2-3 foot seas" That were really 4-5'.