Well, it's been 14 years since the last time since I've been on an open party sportboat. With my boat being still down, I needed to get an opportunity for some tuna this year and the yellowfin are really close.
I talked to my buddy who got me a free ticket on the Malihini. It's funny, the boat is exactly as how I remember it.
The moon was full, so I was hopeful the fish weren't all full from feeding all night, but was prepped and ready.
We headed to the 302 instead of the 9 and the water looks pretty good. As we were going out I thought I saw a shark fin, just to realize it was a smaller model Marlin! Tail and dorsal were out of the water and it was slowly swimming, but no one cared. This was the private boater in me that wanted to stop. lol
We found jumping fish and dragonfly flying fish, but the captain didn't want to stop as it wasn't enough fish for him. We finally get to a good mass of yellowfin and I was the first to get a bait out. I was using the 15# test as it has been a picky bite and the smaller line was getting most of the fish. There was 27-30 people on the boat with a variety of talented anglers to absolutely no talent of fishing. Lots of spinning reels on conventional rods and conventional reels on spinning rods.
I was the first to hook up and when I finally started to gain ground, he sawed me off. I re-tie a new hook on again and get bit instantly just to have the same thing happen. I then grabbed my 25# stick as I was tired of losing the.
The fish were feeding on their own school and were moving fast. We only had about 5 minutes a stop before we picked up and started running again to catch up. We slowly picked away at tuna from 8-24#. I hooked a really small yellowfin and saw this 12 year old kid who was just having a hard time. His dad was trying to help, but appeared to have never been fishing in his life either so I handed off my rod to him and got to watch him reel it in. Super cool moment as he was like "That was the hardest fight ever!". It was great.
The captain then said he wanted to move to find other fish. I'm not one to leave biting fish to find fish, but I'm not on my boat so whatever the captain says. We found a few big paddies that were loaded with dorado, but he didn't want to fish them as they didn't seem to be in feeding mode.
After the boat ride, we went back to where we were fishing just to have the entire fleet to contend with now. There were tons of fish foaming all around the boat, but it was hard to get bites. I went 0-6 because of mostly tangles. I'll never get over people casting over everyone and reeling in tangling everone's lines and losing peoples fish.
I spent the better part of the day, after losing so many fish, up at the bow casting megabaits and poppers to the frothing schools all around us.
The last stop of the trip, we only hooked one fish and it was the biggest of the trip... of course by the little kid! lol
The boat said 36, but I thought it was closer to 2 dozen when I heard. I walked around and only counted 24 fish, so I'm not sure where the other dozen tuna were being hidden. lol
Greeting back to the big bay.
Well, it was great getting back out on the water again, but I remember why I don't go on the sport boats anymore. I was thankful to get a free ride, so the sting of the skunk wasn't too bad. The only thing I will say about the boat is the two deckhands were poor quality in almost everyway. They were amongst the bottom of my list of deckhands, but I don't want to turn it into a rant so I'll leave it at that.
Well, time to work on my boat again as I won't quit until I can't get it running for sure and have to put a 50 cal through it.
Thanks for reading and all the fish were at the south 9 to 302 area. Lots of BIOMASS!!!!
