Well I wasn't sure if I wanted to head to the 14 Buoy or the NW Places this morning. Once I got out of Beaufort Inlet and saw the condition of the water, I quickly decided on the Northwest Places/B10/L10 complex. Due to the weather, I had the whole place to myself.

I could only make about 10 knots so it took over an hour and a half to get there. Captain Stephen was home sick this weekend, but I don't think he would have like today's conditions anyway.

Put some lines in the water after a challenging ride out. Not long after, I had a short strike. Something cut the ballyhoo in half on the other line. Rebaited and started over. Not long after I had a small mahi on the boat. Took his picture (below) and let him go.

Shortly after I started trolling with a Yozuri DD (just out of the propwash) in addition to the dink hoos. Landed a mahi on the DD shortly thereafter. This represented the first time I have caught anything offshore with a DD. Later I also landed a little tunny (pictured below) with the DD. It was the purple one with a black top (or is that a black bottom? I can't remember).

I lost two nice sized mahi on the hoo. Since I was practicing catch and release I didn't really care. Still, it would have been nice to photograph them.

Also did some bottom fishing. Landed a couple of sea bass and the knobbed porgy pictured below. It put up a really good fight and is bigger than you can tell from the picture.

While bottom fishing, I noticed a fish taking interest in my prop. It followed me as my boat was drifting! I threw a ballyhoo at it and it nibbled but didn't do anything. So I threw some squid at it (that's what I was using for bottom fishing, by the way). It managed to steal the first piece of bait so I tried again. The second time I caught it. It was a sharksucker over 3 feet long! If you turned it upside down, it would literally "stick" the deck! I took a picture (below) and let it go.

The ride in was easier than the ride out.











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