The last minute morning plan was to catch something to harvest. Plan A was to anchor up and drop some squid looking for a Biscuit, Yellow or Halibut but those plans were thwarted when I found my anchor line all tangled to hell. Well, it took 30 minutes before I could unwrap her and try to anchor, but the bottom was too hard and I couldn't get the hook to stick well enough. At that point I decided to drift.
Macks were scarce, but I brought a chum bag with me and dropped it over. It did it's job and the macks stayed around the boat. I made another drift and dropped the bag even lower in the water column. As I was drifting macks, I heard a loud *SNAP* and looked back to see my chum bag line all floating! I pulled in the line and looked around for sea lions, but nothing popped up. I'm not sure what the hell happened. Shark? Old derelict fishing gear? Who the hell knows...
I then have a great hit and felt like a big butt! I worked her up slow and was shocked to see about a 3 plus foot Angel Shark. I lip gaffed her to get a few pics in the boat when babies started popping out! I didn't even get a pic of her, but dropped her back in immediately and saw her spit one out on the way down. I turned my attention to freeing these little fockers! They were pretty cute! I let 6 of them go and they all swam straight down. Totally were ready for the world.
I continue my drifts when my big weight rod doubles over. It was going in a B-line and not stopping at all even after clamping down on the drag. I had to start the boat and chase it down, but I was expecting a big BSB. About an hour long battle and a few miles of chasing, I see a big brown body ascending from the deep. "Sea Lion?" popped in my head and then I saw the tail! It was a HUGE thresher shark!!! My best guess is about 2 bills, but wow! It was like 14' long with the tail!!! I'm scrambling to find a tail rope and gaff while not alarming the shark, but it was too late. I dropped something in the boat and startled it because it took a speeding run and HUGE jump just to clip my line.... UGH...
I was depressed, but not that much since it was an awesome fight and something totally unexpected. I was stoked to say the least!
Now back to trying to find something to harvest...
It was getting towards when I had to be taking off and only had a few drifts left. I saw my same rod do a funny bounce and just start loading up. Once again, it fought like a halibut, but felt MUCH bigger! I had dreams of seeing a 50# butt on the deck! I saw deep color and it looked right for about a minute when I saw I had another Angel Shark on! I lip gaffed the beast and brought it in the boat. No babies came out so I dropped her in the kill bag to ice her down.
It was a few inches short of 5' and NA'd my cheap digital scale, but looked to be just at 50 pounds. In any case it was a beast and tough as sh!t to filet! The skin is tough like a trigger fish and there was a strong fish smell to her. The belly was loaded with weird stuff I couldn't identify and there was not as much meat on her as I thought there would be. The meat was pure white and looks to be awesome table fare.
Well, anyway... Thanks for reading. I heard of a few tuna being caught on the radio, but it seemed to only be a few lucky guys getting a few nice fish. I heard a guy get a 165# Bluefin fairly close on a kite.