I had this day marked off for a month now to get in on the early big BFT action. My buddy and I hammered out a plan and decided to leave Friday afternoon and try a "Night Bite" followed by a trolling/Paddy session the next day. It's been quite a few years since I attempted a 24+ hour trip on a smaller boat (non-Sporty)
As we were heading across the 9, my buddy asks if I've seen any sharks lately. Literally I look up and say, "Right There". 6-6.5 foot mako just cruising the surface. He was like, let's get something on the board right away! It was cruising so I just tossed out a mono circle hook with a sardine and just going to hope. Well, it slammed it right away and I was on! Amazingly, it stayed on until it got next to the boat. I'm not sure it really knew what was going on, but then went crazy and cut through the line... Ugh. I put a steel leader on with a Jobu hook and sent another sardine out. I get picked up again and I'm feeling really confident now. Came up and threw the hook near the boat and it decided it had enough and sunk out.
Otherwise, the Coronado Canyon was also loaded with Dolphin!
There was BLUE WATER, Salps, Pyrosomes and Vallela EVERYWHERE! We took off and decided to hit the 302. We stopped and I threw on the spotlight to see a sea of vallela as well a pyrosome soup in the water! I took pics, but the camera phone didn't do it justice). We also listened to Mola literally jumping around the boat! Not sure if they were mola, but the splashes sounded HUGE!
We also saw a bunch of Thetys vagina, or the Twin sailed Salps. I'm not kidding, that's their names....
There were literally Billions!
I saw a lot of fish swimming around in the lights and kept trying to scoop one in the bait net which had a big hole in it. I lost a few of the weirder one, but caught this Blue Eel, which was silver on the bottom side! Come to think of it, it might just be a super young Saury.
We had a plan, but after metering a couple of fish and having no luck, we started to figure out what we were going to do. We watched about a dozen sporties head in a straight line past us, so my buddy wanted to follow and see where they were going. I really wasn't up to follow the crowd, but not my boat, so not my rules and I said wherever you want to go. I layed back after getting tackle together and waited for us to stop. Next thing I know and we're 55 miles out! We counted 64 sporties and only barely saw a few dozen small boats.
Not the same picture, just 90 degrees off the first!
50+ miles and the beautiful blue water was LOADED with Salps, Vallela and Pyrosomes! Jeez!
We got in line for the drift and metered some small packs of JUMBOS! Unfortunately, nothing on the knife jigs, Butterflies, and sinker rigs with gorgeous bait! After 3 hours of nothing, My buddy took a nap and I started flylining some baits as well as deep drop rigs. Then they came... At first one and I caught it just to get the skunk off.
Before I knew it there were a half a dozen swimming around the boat. I was bait threading sardines straight to the mono to just get them to slam the bait and jump out without having to hook and catch them. (There were also a bunch od whales surfacing in the darkness near the boat which was a little unnerving)
They ranged from 2.5-6.5 feet! I wanted nothing to do with fighting a big Blue shark and popping him on the boat to unhook it. I was way too tired and just playing with them was fun.
I put a flylined bait out way outside the lights, but another blue found my line.
Finally my buddy woke up and we started a more aggressive search for a night bite.
Nothing in the witching hours, so soon as we got grey light, we were on the troll.
I'll spare you the rest of the 12 hours on the water, but it was a lot of trolling Mad Macs, Spreader Bars, and Paddy Hopping (Saw Yellows, but never got a single one to stick)
After a long night/day on the water we decided to just deep drop really fast for some hopeful Reds. I stuck a 2# cod weight on and couldn't hold bottom... Basically that was a wash, so ran in and called it the trip.
As we were taking the boat out of the water and licking our wounds, I heard a "Het man, I know you...". As I look up, I see Tombo with a big old smile! I was secretly hoping he didn't slay them as to rub any more salt in the wound, but was a little relieved that they had the same issues we did out there.
It was my first offshore trip of 2023, so there's plenty of time to dial it in or at least get lucky here and there!
Whew, thanks for reading and until next tide!
