The hell seas gave up the ghost today and laid out at 2-3'. That was nice but the water was green even to 600' of water. That being said it was a delightful day and late morning despite the blue green water the fish started to chew. We picked some neeters then missed the first of four sails we would miss today. My people wanted to try to hook their own but the fish were pretty tricky. We boxed a couple nice dolphin and had a zillion neeters and another mystery fish that spooled us (on a speedmaster small outfit). Late in the game I came to bat and set the steel on three elusive pointy ones so it wasn't a total bust on them.
Grabbing my squids and switching boats now for a quick swordie run...
Back at it for another double tomorrow should be fun... Been a while since I did two doubles back to back but the sea flattened out and I need to strike while the iron is hot..
Well the good news is we found em... The bad news is we couldn't keep em pinned to the hooks tonight... We had a quicker drift than I had hoped for and it was wind doin the pushin. I needed to go up on the lead as we had the 80 gear soaking...
Set right at dark and as I was positioning the 100' bait I felt a tap... Then another then another. I could not get the fish to commit and while I was trying to bring on a bite by pulling it away, the mid bait got drilled. I went to lock up that one that was running off and my fish finally piled. I tossed the mid bait reel in gear then thumbed down (burning it ) on mine before tossing it in gear. The deeper fish started a run and I was trying to set steel in mine as it raced toward me. Mine came unglued and almost at the same instant the other one did too...
I reset quickly and the same 100' bait got nailed just as I set the rod in the holder. Just one hard hit and gone...
Reset again and nothing for about twenty minutes... Then I saw the mid bait angle changing... Ok... Game on? I tried to come tight and felt what I guess was a small fish giving very little resistance. I just cranked hard trying to set the lp in it but the resistance was just too little and I wound up with a calamari baseball. 0-4
An hour later it was a repeat of that last fish. I'm pretty sure it must have been really small pups we were dealing with and the 80 gear is too bulky to pick up and strike properly... We gave it a while longer with no more bites and took advantage of being the closest possible angle to the inlet to head home. The night was gorgeous and moon lit. A bit of breeze and some chop but nothing bad... Fish or no fish, 5 bites beats sitting home watching TV any way... We'll give it another shot tomorrow night after my day trip...[/
Had my buddy True Blue Tackles owner , John (Scupinator) and his bride to be Cathy out for a spin today. The chop was up much more than the clowns at the weather service had said. Bad enough for some to turn around but for us it was doable. It was slow to start and late morning before the bite materialized.
We missed a sail or two in the midst of one of the heaviest smack downs of neeters in history. We didn't keep count but I would guess we drilled 60 or so of the little buggers. We did have one exceptional rainbow runner in the mix too. Dolphin were scarce and the sails were more in tune with live bait today.
The weather was great nad the company even better. We didn't deck any slobmonsters but had bent rods solid for several hours...
I had a couple PM's asking what a rainbow runner was. No its not a fancy name for blue runner. Not really closely related to them other than being some place in the jack family. They are actually closely related to of all things a california yellowtail! This is yesterdays with True Blue Johns fiance' Cathy doing the honors...
It felt odd boarding another boat so close to where I keep the Deep. We slid up the ditch and picked up a dozen prime goggle eyes from my buddy. From there it was a bone jarring spine numbing run of about a mile over ferocious foot and a half seas. The icy 78 degree air nipped at my nose as we arrived in my chosen spot.
A full volley of three gogs were splashed and it was time to concentrate. At Tims request I narrated why I was making each turn while working the grid. I was a touch south of my usual spot to start but I wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything.
First to find our high dollar offerings was a king. The little bugger was off his timing and wound up skyrocketing on the same bait several times. We may have even got some of the ariel display on vid. Next to annoy us was a small dolphin who abused but couldn't eat our tender vittle...
I was now getting to the first of my ranges that hold fish well and I did an east west pattern in there with just a touch of angle to offset todays light current. Tims phone rang and as he was talking here came mister sail. The gog was frisky. So much so that the critter had a tough go of catching it. Finally the spiked one drilled it... A short drop and it was game on!
The fish was a frisky one and I wanted Tim to get the full benefit of it so I just maneuvered the fish out of the spread and let him fight while we continued to pull two baits. I guess it was fifteen to twenty minutes or so on light gear to get the beastie boatside. I let it go and high fived Tim for his first sail ever!
I continued to beat that east west path with the angle and on the second pass Tims phone rang again as we poked a nice gaffer bull dolphin. Another pass but this time deep had a sail raise and blast the left rigger gog. I looked but couldn't see the fish or bait any more. I did see the line angle changing... "Tim, pick that rod up. Reel like hell and swat him! He's sitting in the spread." Like a champ he did as I asked and was bowed up on a big slobby one. As that fish launched I saw another come into the flat line. What I didn't know was that it had eaten the right rigger bait. I kinda muffed that one... Ooops.
Tims fish made an inshore move which was not the norm for big sails. I had a hunch it would come back and go hard east so I set the boat in its way. Like clockwork it did come east and right to us... Once it got close it knew we had outsmarted it so she sounded and made Tim work hard to get back up. Some great boat side tailwalking after a half hour fight and I set that one free...2-3
We slid back to our range and I pounded it. The baits let us know that sails were there by skittering around but the fish were being moon moody and were slow to raise. Finally after a few scares up one came. It piled on the rigger and it was game on for the third time. Just after hooking up another fish raised and ate the line that was behind Tim and I couldn't get to it quik enough. This one stayed up top and hot for the full twenty minutes of fight and again on vid we got the clean release...
We set our last livies out and although they were going nuts a couple times we couldn't get the fish to raise. The radio reports from today had us feeling good with our 3-5 as being top dogs in town. We had a visitor come up and sniff a hoo. I won't detail at this time but lets just say I Deeped him for getting to close. The wind was now cooking pretty good though the seas were still nice. That wind had us pulling the baits a bit hard and eventually we pulled off enough to force a troll to finish the day.
We popped out a spread of nakeds and a single day saver. The day saver scored twice on a couple chunky neeters and we decided to call it a day.
I'm thoroughly convinced that Tim's gonna need a surgeon to remove the smile he was wearing. I had not just popped his cherry... I crushed it!
My new buddy Beach Haven Bill showed up with his uncle on time. The flags were flappin hard from the east and I could already feel the butt beating on its way...
As assumed the inlet was ugly and outside was not much prettier. 3-5 tight slop was doing its thing on us as I deployed the spread. Today would be trolling and probably just as well as rolling at idle speed in the slop didn't seem appealing. We kicked things off with a raised sail. These fellows wanted to try it on their own and there was a bit of ...well... not so sharp dropping back going on. Thats ok though it was their first shot. After missing here came a gaffer dolphin and piled on the beat up bait.
We picked a couple more gaffers then slid north working a beautiful edge. Another sail gave them a few shots but the sticks stayed straight. Things to the north were no better than where I left so I bucked a 4knot plus current back south ...
Doink doink doink the gaffers started comming steady. Doink doink doink they got even thicker. Then the day saver goes off. I'm thinking dolphin then my "hole" hoo gets piled on by a sail. I start working it and another sail raises on the rigger I pass the hole bait to the passenger and try to work the rigger fish into a bite. Blam Blam! The rigger fish eats and the "hole" fish eats. Neither stayed stuck... 0-4
I scrambled to get a fresh spread out and the dolphin wouldn't leave us alone. . I got in a turn and here comes purple again... This time im in position as Bill had his hand full of lunch. Swat, tap tap, swallow , bow up!
It was a wild ride on that one with plenty of boat side stuff to keep us busy... I got the hook back and theres one piling on one hanging in the rigger... Off to the races...
Things got silly busy from then on. Dolphins and sails everywhere! The box was full as we wanted and things just couldn't have been better...
We took to releasing the green death as there was already too much. The rigger clips were glowin cherry red from gettin worked. I have no accurate count of how many phins we worked... All on the troll no bailing!
The spike count climbed and we called it a day way late and left em biting..
The day would be another memory bmaker. Chrerrys popped? Nah... Crushed again! As I put down the fillet knife tonight my rigger looked like this...
And I'm so beat I can't see straight...
They beat me to the boat and I was early. The sky was gray with a little rain falling as was forecast. I lit the engines off , pulled out and headed under the bridge that has been undergoing renovations of years now. As I passed directlyunder the span the were pouring concrete on, a couple workes thought it would be fun to screed some over the edge and on to my lovable little Deep C...
I let the bridge tender know about it and to let the construction supervisor know that I may pay a "Deep visit" later today.
We stopped on the way out and bought a dozen "swimming gold" goggle eyes. The inlet was nasty. The 10-15 promised was more like twenty. The rain came harder and harde. By the time I set the baits it was 100 foot visibility.
The rain was outrageous but worse was some lightning getting involved then the wind starting to cook. White streaks of foam let me know that 25 or even 30 was now working. The baits all got paniced but nothing raised. A half hour later a sail finally raised and swam a lap around our terrified goggle eye but refused to eat. The seas had gone from 2 to 4 and now to 6 foot in a hurry. Litterally no period and I could smell danger in the air. A bad one broke next to us and another couple qualified as ugly eights. I waved the white flag and tucked back to the beach for the day... Tomorrow I hope will be better...[/
Had Fastwater and his Bro back out for round tqwo... The 10' seas went away and layed right out to almost slick calm. It was looking good for sure. The baits made it through the night and we set up in purple water on the edge...
The livies went out and the wait game began. We waited and waited and after no bites and a quiet radio we switched over to dead baits. Bingo. Almost immediately we started picking neeters. We took a pass kind of deep and a billfish just came up and crushed the left rigger. Fastwater readied for combat and the fish to a second swat but dropped the bait again. It was piling from under neath and was tough to see then suddenly it appeared on the right and poled on that one also letting it go/
A few minutes later we caught the first of many blackfin tuna that made a guest appearance. Normally I would say that bill fish bite was a sail but the explosive nature and the blackfins around have me thinking more like a small blue...
We continued to pick blackfins and bonitis with a skipjack tossed in for good measure... Then I saw multiple tow boats and a research boat and knew whatt was comming next. They shooed me off my spot so some damn experimental sub could do some sea trials...
A couple more sails raised but just wouldn't commit. The neeters atleast provided some action. We switched back to live and again not a sniff. The troll was back on and we got into some hummer sized neeters that at least were good for cooking some drags. We fished til sunset with two more sails raised and swatting the baits but they had lock jaw like the others... Oh well... Tomorrow is another try...
Had Fastwater and his bro again today. Purple water still way inside. The rain came and came again all day. We set up a bit south and let the current take us for a ride. About twenty minutes into it a sail launched and free jumped right at my cockpit...
Fifteen minutes later another came up and just swated my rigger bait but wouldn't eat. We drifted up more and we found the dolphin. Gaffer class fish and we boxed seven of them very quick.
The radio was dead and guys were screamin. We got a bit too far north and the kings waylayed us so I went on the troll. I tried north, south, out and in. Then I started hitting specific hot spots. One by one we failed to score. Then as I neared one shallow wreck here came the right sail. Lit up, fin up, head out of the water stuff. It ate. Fast dropped just right, came tight but the hook pulled.
We raised another out deep and decided to try near the wreck again. We hooked a tiny neeter and here came a nother sail at blistering speed and nailed a day saver. Two shots there before sliding back and giving two more shots on the rigger... It too went away...
We trolled up a tiny neeter and I livelined hiim back out hoping that maybe natural local food might work... We added more livies and brought in the spread. We slid about two miles back north when a slob wahoo skyrocketed our neeter. It wasn't an instant cut off and it was game on with a 60lb class fish on 20lb spin... The fight went about 20 minutes before the line found a tooth and it was all over...
A final kingfish bite did us in and rain soaked we went in so I would have enough daylight left to clean the dolphins we had boxed. Back at it again tomorrow...
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) on mine before tossing it in gear. The deeper fish started a run and I was trying to set steel in mine as it raced toward me. Mine came unglued and almost at the same instant the other one did too...
[/
This is yesterdays with True Blue Johns fiance' Cathy doing the honors...
