Got ivited for a hook and line/spearfishing trip with my arch trivia rival, his housemate and his friend..
4am show up at his house meant I had to leave the brewery before last call. The horror.
Launched out of Oside harbor at 5 and picked up some decent bait.
Plan was motor south to look for dorado on paddies, then troll north to some tuna numbers from earlier in the week.
Headed south to the 182 or so and started looking with the trollers out.
Not long until we found an open water bird school, pulled out the binos and spotted dorado jumping and slashing under them. Sweet.
Pulled the jigs and gunned over. Dropped baits. I got picked up 4 times. I hooked up 0 times. Frank, got one on bait, then the birds and fish dispersed.
Guess as a surgeon, he doesn't want to hold his fish. Nah, it was just a quick snap on the way to the kill bag.
Trollers out and on the prowl.
Soon after we spot more birds and almost ran over a paddy. Tough to spot them in the choppy overcast conditions.
Baits in and I'm hooked up. had it on awhile and pulled the hook on a nice bull dorado I never saw.
No more bite for half an hour of drifting. Tried chunk, live bait and jigs. Nothing.
Fish still jumping all around and birds working told us it was time to force feed them some steel and the guys suited up.
First words out of their mouths were things like Wow! Holy sh!t! There are hundreds of fish! As Dave was suiting up he told me to not drift too far from the paddy and circle around to pick them up. Must have had a funny look on my face because he asked You can drive a boat, right?
I said sure. No problem. We all made it back, so I guess I did OK. They offered me use of a mask and wet suit, but I passed. Kind of regret it, but 3 of them weren't enough to pull me back in the boat in my judgement.
Well, they speared a few fish, some made it back to the boat and some tore off. That made the fish skittish and they wouldn't come into range anymore.
Still, everyone got one I think. I was fishing the whole time and never got picked up despite the number of fish.
Finally we gave up and started heading north towards the lifeless waters of the tuna numbers. No birds, no kelps, temp dropping, but they got fish there 3 days ago and wanted more.
This is a bad video of a pod of Risso dolphins we saw. They were cool. Also I can't figure out how to post the video from Imgur.
Hit the tuna numbers for nothing and headed to the beach. 5 mile zig zags trying to spot fish, but no luck.
The tuna cannon remained silent.
Hit the ramp around 5. Frank grabbed some fish and I rode back to the pad to help with boat duties. Fuel scan said we burned about 100 gallons of gas for 4 fish. Better be some good eating.
Had a great time and hope to get the invite again soon.
