WASHINGTON CANYON 6-21

[skirt chaser]

fished the LUCKYDUCK at the washington yesterday . we started at the tip in 74.5 deg water and worked from the 50 to 200 fa lines zig - zaging to the south . spread was spreader bars on the flats , sprinkler teasers with blu/wht witchs , bird chains with blu/wht witchs , green machine bird chain & yozuri bonita purple black wb deep for mr hoo .

most of our bites were on the spreader bars up close with the fish hitting the squids on the bars before taking the hook bait . hook baits were the 7 in GM pulled about 4ft behind the bar .

last fish caught were from a school we found on top jumping . just before we were going to call it a day . had 1 fish shy of a limit and called it quits no need to be hoggish.

had a great crew of Charlie , Pat & Kenny the gaffmaster

we put 11 yfts and 15 mahi's in the box with one of the gaffers going 20lbs .

[terpheels]

Nice Kevin, that W wall has been giving it up now for a good 2 weeks w/that edge that has been hanging out. Any rpts up near the 461 right as its looking good...

[anthony]

Pretty work, I will out there tomorrow chasing 'em down.

[Duskydog]

Nice work. This is my first post to this board. Thunnus Amoungus and I are heading out on Sunday.

[Bert Rodgers]

Nice work. This is my first post to this board. Thunnus Amoungus and I are heading out on Sunday.

Welcome aboard D Dog.

Bert

[skirt chaser]

Anthony we worked the 800/800 square for about an hour no bites there. worked our way down south about 10 miles from the tip and found a bunch of bait & fish there . HOOK-EM was there with us and they caught 8 fish . had a boat between the canyons about another 5miles down that got covered up too . they had to move north , the navy pushed them out of the area . good luck tommorow .
Kevin

[anthony]

Kevin,

Thanks for that! I fished the East wall on Sunday and did real well but it sounds like the bait and tuna have moved a little down the line. I will let everyone know how we did to give yall a jump on Sat/Sun fishing.

[Tunaman]

Kevin great work from you,Charlie and crew.Hope it will last till I get down next week.See ya down there buddy.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Skirt Chaser - something to try the next time that they jump the teasers and not the chasebait.

Two things generally cause this. The first is the last of the teaser squids not lining up with each other at the back of the teaser "school". If you don't want tunas targeting the teasers, square off the last ones and they'll nail the chasebait first much of the time.

The other cause for teaser bites, even with squared off teasers, is quite common, but not recognized by most. It is when the fish freak out and blast the middle of the teasers, often by jumping into them, but sometimes coming in from underneath. The fish aren't hungry, but they seem to like bluffing and taking fake passes at the bait ball. A sure sign that they aren't feeding and this is happening is snagged fish - the chasebait hook gets them after they jump the teasers. Snagged fish often pull hooks on the long surface runs these fish make and this is a tip off that it was a snagged one.

I have watched this scenario for nearly fifteen years from my tuna towers. It happens a lot more frequently than on might think. On many of those occasions I watched the tunas hitting the chasebait every time while the bite was on, then suddenly start doing the teaser thing as bite time quit.

The solution is to change over to a predator configuration by switching the chasebait from the same size as the bar teasers (what we call a bait configuration) to a bigger one. This creates a competitive situation that will trigger some of those tunas to hit the bigger lure to kill, not eat it.

Hope this helps. It sure gets the job done for me.