January Scores....

[Deep C]

Had some stuff to attend to on land today so it was a no fish. The cold front arrived as scheduled and tomorrow looks like another brutal rough one but with a north wind. Hopefully we have a load of sails to make it worth while. The radio chatter indicated a fair bite this morn...

[Deep C]

I was hoping the bumpy northeast would kick some life into the fish this morn but it was a quiet radio at best. Two youngins didn't last long in the slop and I brought them back inside to drag a spoon and jig for junk fish. Even they were slow to cooperate but we managed a single mack and a couple runners for them to pull on. After about three seconds discussion with their dad we pulled the plug early and rescheduled for next week...

[Deep C]

No Show ... Would have been a blow out any way. Puffin 20+ from the NE and back to 6-8' + which is over the top for comfort for my folks. I can't blame the no show. Wish they would have let me know though. I could have slept in... Had some good dreams cookin before I woke up

[Deep C]

About friggin time something went right. The wind was still howling but a hearty crew made the trip work... I splashed the livies with no immediate results then popped a tripple of sails. No muss no fuss. They went three ways and we had the tlds working for us. With them its nice because backing hard into the 5-8 crap we had getting slung at us was not something I wasn't looking forward to. I res set the spread and we baing two more out of three bites. Actually like six or seven raised...
The two cooperated nice and I went right back to reset but alas the school moved off. An hour passed and we had a bunch of over zealous dolphin try to tackle our mix of gogs and hard tails... They were too small to wolf em down though. As we slid a bit north the slop got tighter and nastier so I tucked back to where we started... The kings were there waiting and left me 3 hooks shorter than when I left the dock. We fired out fresh and were covered up again by toothies...
Out of live we switched to the dead spread and started picking bonitos on the day savers. I was surprised that only one dolphin found us but that was all we found of them. Anyway, the group was great and look forward to having Ryan and his bunch out again and again. The laudry was hangin in the riggers so ass beating or not, it was a good day!

[Deep C]

Some of my passengers travel in groups. Some prefer the one on one game that is made affordabel by me having smaller boats. Mike is one of them. He also has a very rare istinction of having fished with me now four years straight on around the same date. More rare is that he had yet to catch a sailfish... But rarest of all is that he for three years running stumbled onto a blue marlin with me.
The wind absolutely screamed through the night and I was pretty well sure that it would be a blow out bust. The wind dropped around sunrise and some clouds filled in enough to threaten some rain. He arrived and off we went. Now our target would be a blue one as his last three sail trips found blues.
The masher and cavitaor perkded just right in the towring left over slop from the windy night. The dinky ones seemed to speak. The dk's on the riggers were pulling their pants down and sticking their tongues out in order to draw a pissed off blue to the spread.
At 560' the seas had enough space between them to let me find an angle of trough to work . Up sea was a bit much and the spread didn't want to play. Down sea was a sled ride and the baits wouldn't settle in. We picked a mahi a few minutes into the drag so the pressure was off... Then a shadow appeared behid the right rigger. Blue?
Nope the fish ate and I ran the mustad home solid. The fish launched and it had a high back... Finally after four years Mike had a sail bowed up. A frisky fish this one did not do as yesterdays fish did and behave. It decided to go on a upsea bolt. Surely the 25 would put a quick stop to that... Not!
I got to do what I really didn't want to do... Go backwards in the rough stuff... Not a comfortable option with old shaft seals and rudder seals that I had intended to replace but instead had to fix the engine first... Eventually we got back to the tail wrapped beastie and sent it back to the wild blue yonder...
Sure enough I could see the red light of the bilge pump talking to me. Now being a boat owner, you learns some "tricks" and i knew a hard run forward would reseat the seal. It worked... So we continued the drag. About an hour later we had a sail raise on the bird/dink. Mike was intimidated about trying the drop back and set up himself and asked me to do it. The auto pilot button was hit and I went to work. yet another came for the other flat and Mike had no choice but to give it a shot while I worked the one on the bird. His fish ate first and he did just right... The string came tight and the reel started to unload... My fish finally piled and we were bowed up on a double. A quic pull back on the throttles and dropping one in neutral stopped the line hemorrage and he started to work his. Mine came unglued before I could get back to the stick so I just reeled ot up and cleared it.
Back at the helm I came back gentle using the "good side" seals and avoiding a problem... Fifteen minutes later mike had the leader in hand. I handed him the pliers... "Finish it..." he cut the string and had finally dropped back, bowed up, fought, leadered and let go a fish un aided... Mikey did it!
I went to splash the spread but the wind was back to screaming again and Mike opted to quit while he was ahead...


*I appologize for the lack of pictures during the last couple weeks but the antichrist camera of mine stays in the car when seas get over 4'. The nature of my albie is to sometimes run through the 5-6 skinny stuff instead of over the top. When that happens, I get a load of water wash up the windshield and some leaks down to the area I store my camera...

[Deep C]

Early Spring?

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For the first time in a long time I woke to find gray drizzly skies... Jersey Dave was chompin at the bit and despite the south west (not fishy) wind and rain potential, I was even a bit pumped. At least it wouldn't be another arse whoopin like I've been getting for the last couple weeks. It was a dead spread from the get go and the four hard tails I broght with never hit the water...
Out of the schute was a cuda that was promptly released with extreme prejudice... Out in 200' I found a fair rip and we boxed two near gaffin sized dolphin. Then a third piled on us that I should have poked as all I got out of that was a bare hook back when I tried to flipem in the boat. In between rain bands I added baits to the spread and had my deadly seven workin before long. The wwwwwb black and red rig went down with a tell tale screamer that would have to be a wahoo. As I pulled back on the throttles the rigger went down and we wound up doing a double of fair 20 class hoos.
Back on it we found a 12 lb dolphin that did feel the sting of the gaff. I looped back through 150' getting ready to take a run at the rip again and left rigger went down blind. A dandy sail gave us quite a show and beat me up but good at boat side. Rain began to poor around 11:00 and really didn't want to let go. At 11:30 Dave took the option to call it a half day and we headed in...
With time to kill I went to where I keep the little boat and wanted to touch her up in a few places and fix a few things. While there I set my box of work stuff under an awning to keep the light rain off it. I had my back turned for a few minutes and when the rain broke I went back to get the box. It was gone!
Whats worse was the dock boss watched the guy take it... A transient drifter... Why was he there in the first place?... Dock boss gonna get a long hard time from me if he doesn't nail the guy... He knows him by sight...
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[Deep C]

Well that was refreshing!

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Did a skiff run with a couple locals who have fish with me on it a few times... The joy of the lpittle boat is I can get in tight to spots to jig up some hardtails and runners... One of our passes on the spouth jetty point produced 6 genuine blue runners other passes produced another six hard tail (fake runners) in total.
I slid to 90' and splashed the first two baits as the north west wind steadily built. Not long after we had a king make short work of one of them. I replaced the rigs quicly with wire and two hooks and was happy I did. two more kings in the 15 class launched and bowed up befoere Icould get out past them. Once I reached 120' they were pretty well over but I still had those rigs on. Then a coud of sails raised. We bowed up on two right away and I flipped a third bait to hook an insurance fish... That worked and glad it did because one of the first two jumped off...
We had bot fish to the boat at the same time and as i was trying to dig the two hook rig out ofthe first the second did a litlle dance and pronged me in the neck! I get pronged once a year or two but this was the first time I ever had one so close to doing serious damage. All part of the job... As I wasn't sure how boad the wound was at first I just cut the rigs off and set the fish on their way. Some blood but not copious amounts. Real close to the main lines though...
Once convinced I wouldn't die I splashed the baits again back to the mono leaders and single hooks... Some dolphin swam in but too small to take what we had to offer. A nother tripple of sails raised but this time we sucked and only bowed one up. That one was freed after fifteen minutes of some wild air show...
Kings piled on us and finished the bait supply with no more in the box. The clock showed time was up for the half any way so in we went...

As a follow up to yesterdays theft... Some "native" I guess talked to the perp and said he thought the stuff "Was being thrown out" . Maybe my excuse when I catch and toss the ******* in the drink will be" I thought you were a manatee!"