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Good Time at WMO...
Brought the "Dad" south on Saturday... A couple thunderstorms along the way and an hour wait for the Rt.50 bridge were the only notables along the way. My crew forthe most part showed up Sunday and settled in.
We discussed all the different strategies we could employ for what style to fish and the boss man settled on the "hero or zero" Godzilla class spread with a standard dink and dredge back up if we weren't raising fish.
Lines in call on Monday morn had my mate and myself deploying a ten bait spread of all monster class plastic as requested. Barts, mashers, cavitators, bazookas, wide range and even a couple "terds in the punch bowl" tossed in.Unable to get a fresh turbidity shot had landed me in dirty water to start but as we steamed along at 8 knots it wasn't long until we had decent water and getting better. Plenty of flyers, whales and bird life kept us company. Late morn saw the first visitor to the spread.
A small white came up on the bazooka and it was rather comical watching it trying to I guess hump the leg of the 18" offering cause he sure couldn't eat it. Finally he peeled off and less than a half hour later a moderate size blue slapped the masher. It came over to the bazooka and shouldered up but never unloaded. We pitched a mack but the fish ignored it and faded away...
The afternoon saw a white shagging a wide range but never even touched it. Then a bit later a blind bite hammered the "Terd" and proceeded to dump half a fifty wide before launching. A smallish 150-200 class blue gave a good accounting of its self then charged at us. I could say that the angler didn't reel fast enough but that wouldn't be accurate. I was slow on the sticks and didn't react fast enough. Some slack got in the equation and the rod stood straight. By dyas end we had covered from the Washington to the Poormans.
Day two had us at the other end of town after Lennys shot nailed a good looking piece of water. Got in there and it was stunning condition. There were a couple pots near us just jammed with bait and dolphin both... We established the ends of the lively gorgeous water and traversed it all day. A lone white came up and swatted the same terd we had the blue bite on the day before. Deep dechand laid a bullseye of a pitch on it with a dink and the fish couldn't care less. It was locked in on the odd looking plastic and wouldn't play. An hour later here came a better class of blue. No keeper but 400ish. Madder than a hornet it erupted behind two barts and our shotgun bait swinging like a drunken brawler but the mouth never came open. The clock ticked fast that day and we had drawn no more billfish bites come close time.
Day three found us outside of where we had fished Tuesday. Unbelieveable amounts of bait, whales, birds, rips, etc. Spirits were high. I hammered a thermal break working south when we spotted a floating lounge chair. Closing in on it we had a fair dolphin eat the turd and dropped the 24.5 pounder in the box. I swung back in the area and piles of dolphin swarmed behind the big baits. One pair though looked odd. I had my boss pitch to the bigger of the two. One of our other crew pitched the other. Circles both sunk and a few minutes later we had a pair of mutant looking critters on the deck. I have caught a few but always much smaller through the years but nobody aboard had ever seen such. I knew immediately from the size of the bull something special had just happened!!!!
There is a subspecies of Dolphin called Pompano Dolphin. This rare catch seldom exceedes 4 pounds. I had never seen one over 3 p[ounds and never even heard of one over 5. This fish was clearly bigger... I would have to wait to get to the dock to dig up some solid info that would eventually lead to something really cool.
We worked the break to where it met structure. A white raised and smacked my shotgun. A while later one popped at a wide range senior. Then they started comming fast and furious. Primarily back on the shotgun or the turd it was a steady stream of the, We agreed no pitching unless a potential money fish but Deep Deckhand couldn't help it. He drilled one and had it running just fine. I don't know what happened but for the first time since I have dragged circles we had one pull. Oh well.. We had a lone small blue pop a bart off the tag and shadow. We pitched both hoo and mack at it and it ignored us. By the end of the melee we had eight white bites and a blue bite but only one fish actually touch a pitch. None of em big enough to play and we didn't mind a bit.
We had three great days with the best bunch of guys that I could have ever asked for. We get to try again at the Ma500 in a couple weeks. We tried the hero or zero and the zilch came up this time.
Back at the scalews though it got interesting. We hung the 24.5 fish for grins to see iif we could sneak out daily meat money. Then out came our oddball Pompano Dolphin. We got the biologists and IGFA people scrambling. Previous record 7 pounds and change. Our fish........... 8 and then some!
Ok we didn't take home a million bucks but you couldn't buy the smile from the boss man for twice of that when he found he had a new pending world record !!!!!
A closer look at the subspecie...
On the certified scale at AKE's...
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JIG STRONG
Originally Posted by bigfish4me
