Well with school starting in two weeks my dad told me get your offshore fishing in now before you can't get out at all...
So I hopped on the Chubasco II at the last minute.
Got checked in, everything squared away, and off we were to the bait barge. Same bait as its been the last few weeks, the usual lively, yet uncured 8-14" sardines! You'd be lucky to find a 6-8" dine in the tank. Captain Chad said we'd be going into to Mexico offshore and the fish have been pretty finicky eating 25lb or lighter. Well the 1.5 hour ride wasn't too pleasant for many, 1/3 of the load (29 people) got sick including me barfing 3x... :x also the swell&wind was really up making for waves splashing up to the captains window. Finally we get into the grounds and immediately find a trash can lid sized paddy. We troll around it and HOOKUP! Land a 6-7lb dodo and another on bait. (the guy who gets the biggest dine in the tank, last bait out on a coffee grinder, and straight 65lb braid!?!? what the heck!) That'd be the same story all around, find these trash can lid sized paddys with nothing on them. I was starting to get worried I was going to get skunked but we quickly spot a massive school of porpoise. We troll by it for nothing until the captain gets perfectly in front of it and says "WTH!!! how are we not bit! Kevin throw two scoops of bait on it!" Well we long soaked for nada then as we wind'em up I think I get hit but it comes off. Then two guys are instabit! We all scramble for fresh bait as 35-40lb YFT just start absolutely killing bait 10 feet off the stern. I'm instabit and then the whole boat even the rental rodders were bent on tuna! Or was it??? Our "tuna" start giving montrous head shakes as they get to color. HOLY CrAP! These are 15-25lb yellows! Didn't matter what you threw it was true WFO fishing. After putting 3 on bait, I saw some yellows boiling on then bow. Quickly grabbed the surface iron rod and fired to them. Again instant 10 fish following the jig and boils! Boils! Ahahhhhhhaha! Fresh one! That would be the same for the next hour, 3-10 followers chasing the jig, something ridiculously close to 30-35 boils, and many hookups. I ended up landing 6 on the jig (I threw a mint&white Tady 45 but it didn't really matter you could throw a non kicking jig and get bit) . Fishing was so nuts eventually I just grabbed a gaff in one hand rod in the other and started gaffing my own fish. Deckies even gave us two guys on the bow a gaff to self gaff them after they saw we could do it!
Fun times! Even poked the eyeballs out of a YT with the gaff single handed! Well eventually after a 1.5 hour stop the school moved on. I believe 3 of us had over limits (somehow I got the most with 9), no YFT were landed (or maybe none even hooked), and I don't even know how many people&rental rodders got limits. We gave our excess fish to the crew (luckily 4 guys). The rest of the day was more of the same, one more dodo landed, 2 skipjack on the troll, and many freeswimmers just too small to be interested in the huge bait. We ended up with 124 yellowtail, 5 mahi, and 2 skipjack for 29 anglers. Headed in tired and stoked!
The money shot (why did I pick up the smaller fish and why do they never look as big???)
But in reality I was struggling
"Take a dump on those fish!"
Thanks for reading!
Nicky
