I had plans to do a half-day at the inner banks this morning with my buddy looking for bluefin and dorado. It turned into having his son and nephew come out to join us also. Boat filled up in a hurry. lol
He modified his Madmacs since we went 0-4 on them the previous week, but I quickly found out that he unmodified them so we were back to square one.
We met up at 4:00 am and got an early start to the ramp. We got baits, but they were in bad shape and the bait guys were really chinsy with their scoops.
Water kept getting warmer... 74.5 a few miles from the first bank. We started metering definite marks at grey light... I mean DEFINITE tuna marks! Nothing at the surface, but we dropped back the Madmacs and within 5 minutes we had a screamer on! AND the right kind!
As you can figure out, after a bity of a battle, it had a head shake and pulled the hook... UGH! Since I'm on his boat, he is the captain and makes all the calls. I just keep my lips shut as he kept trolling away from where we were metering everything and when he finally turned around, never got back to where we metered them. I like to keep my trail on so I know exactly where I am trolling and can repeat lines, but he likes to eyeball it, so it was a missed opportunity.
In any case, we got to the other side of the bank and the water temp dropped two degrees and got a little greener. We saw a couple of Mola's jumping and a bunch of tiny dolphin in the area. We were looking in the same direction when we saw something I've never thought I'd ever see.... a 300-500 pound marlin jump straight out of the water in a horizontal jump! WTF! It was HUGE and I saw it CLEAR as DAY! We immediately trolled the area, but couldn't get anything to rise up again. The things I've been seeing at the innerbanks the last few years have been astounding!
We decided to move back inside to the warmer and cleaner water while the entire fleet was running to the 182. Along the way, we saw jumping mahi! Like in a 500 yard square of them!
My first bait in and I'm on! A nicer model about 12 pounds and I get him to the boat, but my buddy was not quite on his game with gaffing and after about 10 missed swipes with the gaff it was off.
In total, we lost over a dozen fish from swallowed hooks, thrown hooks, bit off lines, a few missed gaffs and a few tangled lines, but we did manage to get some in the cooler thankfully.
If you really want to see what we in the middle of, please watch this short 90 second video... It will sum up what we dealing with. LOL
https://youtu.be/li4WnjukfS8We finally ran out of bait and couldn't get anything to commit to artificial or trolling. Time finally came where we had to make the run back to the barn.
Happy with everything we encountered out there, but bummed we didn't really capitalize the way we hoped.
In any case, It was a good half-day trip and the pelagics are out and about!
Thanks for reading and until next tide!
