Shake down trip

[Chris]

My buddy got his 27ft world cat out of dry storage, updated some electronics and wanted to do a shake down trip…

We pushed off the dock at 9am on Thursday and had to quickly power right back to it because we didn’t have steering… added fluid, bled the lines and after 25 minutes of turning valves and watching bubbles we had steering again!
Only one bait tank wanted to fill up and the other wasn’t pushing a lot of water so we opted to just go poke around and troll some lures.

Left DP harbor at 10am

Stopped on several empty paddies until we reached the 277 then found one with about a dozen Mola and some rat yellows. Saw a boat about a mile away sitting still for about 30 minutes while we messed around with this paddy and decided to roll over and see what they were doing without blowing them up on the radio. Stopped short about 300 yards and continued at idle when the guy in the tower started throwing up his hands like we were about to run him over… or his kite 200ft in front of us 🤣 apparently they were putting up a kite and we did not see the white kite and balloon against the white/grey clouds and I saw their bait go 20ft in the air and realized what was going on.
Oops.
Looked south and seen a bunch of terns and bluefin blowing up so we hooked north around them, put the mad macs out and cut south to get in front of the fish. We got one hit on the orange mad mac but it didn’t stick. Just ripped some line out.
Saw some breezers and birds in another spot close by and set up to pull across them when a center console came hauling ass into them and pulled up next to 2 spear fishing floats… no flags anywhere, so I had to re adjust to not snag some spear fishermen (saw their video later and they killed it though).

Wind picked up and we wanted to be In by 4 so we trolled back towards the 277, saw lots of birds and paddy’s, didn’t stop on the paddy’s but seemed like the ones west of 277 were holding. No hits and after we got east of the 277 we pulled lines and hauled ass back to DP.

The fish are here. Little far for the inflatable but if you have a larger boat get out there!

[jrodda]

I would maybe consider the haul if I knew I was getting bit, but I’m gonna wait til they get closer. How does that World Cat ride?

[Chris]

I would maybe consider the haul if I knew I was getting bit, but I’m gonna wait til they get closer. How does that World Cat ride?

It’s like it’s on air bags, rides like a Cadillac. Makes me really want one. We did 28mph out in 3ft with slight chop and felt like glass, did 24-25mph with a larger following sea and chop and could hardly notice. Barley any pitching on the rollers and plenty of power. Still had another 1200 RPMs in reserve.

We did around 90 miles and burned 27 gallons with twin engines and mixed fuels. (Stored gas, stabilizer and new gas).

[jrodda]

Damn, over 3mpg, i’ve heard the number was closer to 1.5-2 so i was scouting other options in that realm but sounds great.

[Latimeria]

Man, a 27' cat is a perfect sized boat for SoCal offshore.  I bet it was a lot better on your back also!  Even my buddy's Scout that we fish offshore is kind of rough in a chop.

Thanks for all the intel and post.  This has been a tough start of the year for me and I'm just waiting for when my Preparation finally runs into my Opportunity for 2023.