Tuna On Porpoise Time...3/25

[Capt Josh]

Folks i apologize in advance for the tardiness of this report but for reasons you shall soon discover i've been a fair bit preoccupied...middlin with all manner of things lately...

This past week started off with a bang as we managed to eek out some nice tunas around the rock and further offshore...where there is still a large number of medium 30 - 100# tunas working with and without the porpoise...

We had a great day on tuesday managing several tuna strikes and our first wahoos of the season...while trolling the kite along at 8 knts we usually run a few mauraders or 7-Strand EAL's and sure enough around 11am in the morning it paid off as a massive school of wahoo surfaced out of nowhere to engulf everything we had behind the boat...because we were running mono leaders we lost 3 of the 5 knockdowns and some great lures to boot...but the bacon wrapped wahoo later that night at Margaritas more than made up for it...

IT's nice to see the wahoos show up again it's been a good 3 or 4 years since we've had them in catchable numbers...i can remember the wahoo fishing we had down here 5 and 6 years ago and if the cycle we saw in those years is coming back then it's time to start breaking out the wire leaders again...let us pray...

Then on thursday we left for a proposed overnighter with Steve and enjoyed a great day of looking around for porpoise offshore with absolutely flat calm lake-like conditions with which to work with...

For the most part it was a very loooong morning and early afternoon of looking around...but as so often happens when you stick to the plan and have the patience to perservere...i find the MOTHER LOAD and we absolutely hammer the tunas for the remainder of the afternoon...

I'm sure the boys were questioning my plan until we stumbled upon the thousand some odd spinner porpoise and lures of all size and shape as well as poppers started going night night as tunas from 10 - 80#s whalloped everything in sight...

With some epic action behind us we decide to pull in and head to the rock as darkness is drawing near and i want to get the anchor down and start our chunk line...

As luck would have it we are letting the anchor down at my favourite spot near the rock and the tunas...as if on cue...begin to foam and boil all around the boat...we're all alone out there except for a few commercial pangas...there's no better sunsets in the world than the ones we find out at corbetania as the sky turns pink and the tunas boil up below the retreating sun...

Largo immediately starts dishing out chunks and lobbs a huge chunk bait into the frenzy and a pig of a tuna eats it immediately...the fish tears ass off for the horizon and since we've got the anchor down there's little we can do but watch as line melts off the reel...it's been a long time since i've been spooled but what can you do...finally the line cuts in on itself down near the spool and that's that...another beheamouth safely beyond the horizon...

Well while all of this is going on i suddenly notice the lack of generator noise...SONOFA...

Down the engine hatch i go where it is hot enough to split an atom and where one cranky generator is waiting to have a word with me...

Despite my best efforts i can't restore power or breath life back into the beast so we are forced to weigh anchor and head back to the beach...not an easy decision as the tunas are biting chunks with abandon but what can you do...c'est la vie...

Turns out it was the high water temperature sensor that somehow malfunctioned and stuck open effectively killing all power supply to the gen...a small little doomahickey with terribly evil clout...but we've conquered that nasty little bugger and live to fish again...

I'm headed out to the marina right now to finish all the little chores we took the liberty to accomplish since we were waiting for diagnostics and doomahickeys anyway...and i am not too bashful to admit you can damn well roll sushi in my engine room and lick pancake mix from the lazarette...if there every was a more babied or bristol Cabo 40 i'd like to meet it...

We're out to catch bait tonight and then have 8 straight days of adventure lined up before us...i'm guessing we're going to nail them...one way or another...

Largo and i took the time the other day to re-rig and pre-rig nearly every lure we have on the boat...in laymans terms that adds up to one hellofa lot of lures and now that we have our new Pelagic Lure Bags we have taken the time to seperate our arsenal into quick go-to kit bags for tuna on porpoise, wahoo, general billfish trolling, etc etc etc...you name it...we've got so many lures and lure bag kits stuffed around the boat right now it'll be hard to decide just which memory makers to use at one given time or another...certainly a good problem to have...

The water temperature continues to climb and is now slightly north of 80 degrees out there once you get offshore a ways...and the action really is better out there...but there's not many...actually there's no one out there but us looking around for it...i guess not many fisherman want to spend the cash to get out that far but let me tell you people...the fish are out there...in really really good numbers...you just need to go to where they are and keep looking around till you find them...and they are eating lures with abandon...there's absolutely no need to feed them bait...

What else...well, you name it...as usual there's no shortage of shennanigans going on...

Good luck and godspeed out there...catchem up...

[Hudson]

Another awesome report -- keep em coming. Can't wait to get back there.

[Dave Sikorski]

Great report. Keep them coming.

-D

[Tom Kidwell]

Great report!