Whitey and his Goons At West Atlantis

[SaltyDog]

Wanted to hit that sharp edge in the deep off the Western flats of West Atlantis. Not sure what to expect as OSS and Rutgers were slightly at odds but ultimately OSS nailed it. Left the dock at 2am with NightBite and Dogbite as crew from FH and streamed SW towards West Atlantis. It ended being a longer run than I expected and we had lines in at 630 at the 400ft edge with a temp of 66.5.

Had 9 line tuna spread and and when we hit 1400ft with temp 68 an eruption of 8/9 rods went off. Chaos ensued with only 3 guys on the boat but we were able to boat 6 YFT between 30-40lbs. One of them was a nice fat fish. Got fish gutted and iced and worked our way south to the ? temp break. Within a short time we hit it and the temp went all the way up to 71.9 with nice clean water. A little tweaking of the spread and we are now in business for marlin and tuna. As if on cue, the right flat naked ballyhoo starts getting slashed----free spool, whitey takes it and runs, count to 7, we have him!, no we dont, damn, takes it again, similar free spool for 10 sec, still no hookup. Then appears behind the left naked hoo and same scenario. wtf? He bails us out by swallowing my buddy Roland Beamish Tackle's Munson Mahi with ballyhoo rigged on my own custom daisy chain. Makes a blistering run and then turns to the boat. We get him right-left across the stern as he is all lit up vibrant purple-blue. Bring him behind the boat, grab the bill, haul and hug him in for a few picks and finish off some cool video. Send him back none for the worse and continue south.

We get to 4000ft water, the Raymarine track says 127miles from FH and figure its time to turn around the 31' boat. We work our way east right into mouth of West Atlantis proper and turn north to run the western canyon wall. We had our pick of chicken mahi on high flyers and at one point got covered up with a "wolfpack" of 1lb mahis around what I think was longliner buoys. A slow pick of small YFT. The tip of West Atlantis was covered in skipjacks. We pounded this area for an hour but no bites. Got an 8 week old boy at home so at 2pm we pulled the plug and headed home.

Got back to the dock at 630p. The roundtrip track was 270 miles. Lot of ocean. My second longest trip outside of Hydro a few years back. The water is just pushing in but looks promising for July. Although the YFT are small, it should be another epic white marlin bite similar to last year.

[JSeas]

Nice work! That is a great early season trip. We went to the same location on Sunday and had similar water temps and experience. We got some skippys early and then hooked a bigeye that took a solid hour to fight and land. Had a Mako bite the tail off as we were leadering the tuna.

We had a couple of other swings and misses, but started heading north again, since it was a day trip.. did not go as far south as you did and did not hit the 71 degree water. Seems like it was worth going down there for Whitey..

Great job!

JSeas

[Thynnus]

Great first trip I am hoping to be out there this weekend, it should only get better as we get a few more eddies. Nice work.

[backman]

Nice job. Interesting that you found the good water - I pushed out to 1600' in Fishtales; all by my lonesome below Bigeye mountain and the water got colder and deader the further I went. 64.something out there; 67-68 at the tip; warmer on the flats.

[Reel Pursuit]

Nice job, Mark and Jon on the whitey!!
We weren't so fortunate. Had a whitey in the spread as we were putting lines out. Wouldn't bite and went down not to be seen again. No tuna, no mahis.
Saw lots of life: whales, porpoises, turtle, tons of skippies, several large rays, grampus whales and portugese man-o-war. Things do look promising for July. We're only getting started.

[SaltyDog]

Did only 1 bigeye hit the spread? Although, now you know why the it took so long to get to the boat--with a big *** mako chasing him around...

[Nite Bite]

Secret to Whitey is calling out his old lady

[JSeas]

Nope had a good run off on the short cedar plugs in the wash... just as it came unbuttoned, hooked up on the long center rigger.. so had a couple fish up! It was a battle.. my son Jon on the rod. Did a great job.

JSeas