C-Time Offshore VaBch 7/7/07

**ocnslr** · 07-09-2007 11:25 AM

"C-Time" left Little Creek at 0340, headed for the tip of the Norfolk Canyon. Crew was Cathy, Chuck, Mark, Jeff (a newbie), and me. Great conditions in the morning, and the spread was out at 0620, short of the tip on the 30-fathom curve. Started with a couple of small spreader bars on the flats, the usual WWB, seawitches on the shorts and Islander Pros with horses on the longs.

First knockdown after an hour, comes tight, Jeff is in the chair, and he has his first YFT. Not a big one, but big enough for the gaff and the fishbox. One small chicken dolphin a bit later, then nothing.

We worked the area around the tip, the south wall, the north wall, the south again, then finally trolled to our deep drop point and switched over.

The tiles were definitely not as hungry, or as plentiful, as two weeks ago. But we still managed over 20 nice fish, with some doubles of tiles or tile and seabass.

Highlight of the deep dropping was Chuck (ex-Flounderman 2001, now Tileman 2007), who worked hard to crank up what he thought was a double tile hookup. But it was just a single - an 18#2oz blueline tile !!

After we'd had enough deep work, we ran SE to join Lucian on FishinFool, to see if we could hook up on the troll again. Had a nice knockdown and short run, but then nothing. Lucian hooked up three and boated one big YFT before he headed home. We worked that area until 3:30, then started pulling up and headed for Little Creek - just 74nm away....

A great day on the water, with a great crew. Jeff got his first offshore run, his first tuna, and his first tilefish. Chuck pulled in a beast blueline for a citation.

Brian