Plan was to go for Big Girls on Sunday... but Mother Nature said, "not today". The weather was very questionable, and Plan A was possibly not going to happen, so we planned on B-F also.
I met up with my buddy and son to look locally for a variety of things. We wanted to fish for triple digit Bluefin, but realized we might not able to do the run. Plan B was looking locally for BFT. Plan C was to deep drop for swords. Plan D was to drop for deepwater rockfish. Plan E was to head to LJ and look for the big bruiser Yellows that have been popping up. Plan F, was to catch some squid and hunt the beds. Pretty much covered everything we could while using the same gear for all (That was the harder part trying to figure what 5 rods will cover what we are thinking about catching).
Wind was crisp from first thing in the morning, but it was a gorgeous morning to say the least!
We brought the outriggers since we would inevitably wind-up trolling (and we're over the Madmacs unless a situation presents itself). Man, this water was ugly.... Dirty green at best and 74 degrees.
We trolled two Jet Heads, one feather, one YoZuri lipless plug, and my virgin spreader bar. After all, I still have to break in the new big troller I got earlier this year....
We had Capt Cayleb at the Helm.....
I mentioned that no one could have first turn on my new girl unless it's me, so all my other trollers are for Cayleb for any knockdowns. Well, my little green betty went screaming! The action on a GOOD rod is unbelievable compared to my lesser trolling rods. It totally fought much better than it's size, so there was a little bit of a sigh realizing it wasn't the triple digit, but it made some great runs and really fought for his life before succumbing.
We immediately got picked up on the YoZuri as we started trolling again, but the hook pulled. Another quality fish, but on lighter gear...
We occasionally came across some blank paddies and used the gyros to find birds and fish. Even with gyros, it was hard keeping eyes on the horizon with all of the bouncing we were doing.
We had some crashing fish next to the boat here and there, but we don't have the bait capacity of a sporty, so we couldn't keep any of the schools at the boat.
Long story short from a bunch of woulda-coulda-shoulda's... We ran into LJ to look for yellows. We found them, but only deep. You should have seen the sonar as it might have been the best big fish marks I saw all year! In any case, they weren't in feeding mode apparently, but we tried!
We called it the day after putting 12 solid hours on the water and at least had some meat in the RSW.
Now the virgin rod has been used, I know the splices, knots and terminal gear is all right... Now to get the triple digit on it and then the COW!
Thanks for reading! Until next tide!
