7/27-28 RipDog Canyon Report

[Albatross32]

Left from Falmouth Harbor just before noon this past Wednesday with a crew of Capt Scott Clay, Capt J.C. Burke, Chris Jones, Brian Kelly, 12 year old Tommy Clay (making his 15th Canyon trip already) and yours truly. We spoke with Capt. Damon on the ride down in the lanes and he mentioned a hot bite that morning a little to the West of West Atlantis - perfect news considering it was our exact destination.

So we arrived at West Atlantis at 1600 hrs and began trolling down the West Wall.....Water temp was 72-75 depending on how far West you pushed. It took about an hour or so, but we finally found the porpoise and some shearwaters and petrels gliding and dancing over a nice slick.....JC did a great job and positioned the spread perfectly. Just as everyone’s anticipation went into overdrive…..KA-POOOOW!!.....the left short green machine bar got smashed and we were off to the races....A few minutes later, and I gaffed a nice 40lb YFT - real nice way to start the trip and remove the skunk.

Spread went back out and we continued to pound the area.....The rest of the evening troll we managed a small Mahi, 2 50lb. angry Makos and had one wolf pack of rat YellowFins...some nice action and some good practice for what we hoped would be a very productive morning.

At 2100 hrs we set up for the night and started jigging......Right off the bat, and literally on the very first drop of the night Scott looks over at me and goes "I'm on"........in disbelief I glanced over to see his rod slammed over with line zipping off. He made short work of a nice 50lb fish on the light gear. We quickly caught two more fish with the jigs before things quieted down a bit. The rest of the night consisted of a nice hot dinner, listening to a grizzly bear snore, some porpoise feasting on squid in the lights and a couple sharks that swam in to have a looksie. Radio chatter indicated a Big Eye caught on the troll in the dark and another boat mentioned landing a Sword. Sounded pretty slow otherwise...

We started the morning troll just after false dawn at 0500 hrs.......It took about 15 minutes for the Canyon to come alive, but once it did - it happened in a BIG way....The YellowFin bite for the next 3.5 hours was some of the most insane action I have ever seen. Ended up losing count, but if I had to guess I would say we went something like 25-40 with YFT in the 30-60lb class. Doubling and Tripling up as soon as the boat started moving forward with 6 or 7 rods getting hit each time. Just absolute madness!!!

The highlight of the morning came just as we rounded a high flyer up on the 100 line….A nice big female Mahi came darting out and smashed the shotgun lure (money maker)She did a back flip or two and we all screamed out – “NICE MAHI!”….as the spread was being cleared the Bull comes flying into the spread and crushes a hooded ballyhoo….Doubled Up on legit Mahi…VERY NICE!

After gaffing that pretty pair we decided to push down to the south a bit towards the 500 line to see if we could catch a “special fish” and complete our trip. The water down there was 76-78 degrees and by far the best looking cobalt blue water that we found. We only gave it about an hour or so and ended up having two mystery runoffs, one of which almost spooled a small alutecnos reel before we pulled the hook.

We made one more pass up towards the tip of the canyon on the way out and had one final wolfpack hit from the voracious YellowFins to put a wrap on this one.

Final Tally was somewhere between 25-30 YellowFins, (30-60lbs keeping only 6) 2 Mako Sharks and 3 Mahi…..also saw whales, manta rays, sea turtles and thousands of porpoise

Big thanks to Scotty Clay for taking me out to the deep once again. Great crew, great weather, great fishing. Life is good!

Few pics below….

-Droney