More of the Same (10/12)

[Latimeria]

Damn tuna were at the 425 as thick as army ants, but it was too far of a run for my sled and we didn't have our passports on us.  Besides, need to upgrade the motor and tweak some steering before I make a run like that.  We reserved ourselves to just listen to it on the radio.

Plan A was to load up on rockfish and then shoot out to the 9-Mile and troll a bit seeing if we could see something new or get lucky and get a few blind jig strikes.  Water was greasy flat and even though we were catching a bunch of rockfish, none were the giants of last week. 



Steve even caught a 200' deep turd roller!



The plan was at 10:00 AM to shoot out no matter what and start trolling since usually 10-12 is the weakest time that we get any winds... Well that'll teach me!
10:00 am came and the wind started howling from the west.  Making out fishing line in the rod holders sing and kicking up some white caps.  Squatch wasn't thrilled to head straight out into it, so we turned to La Jolla to see what we could find.  Floating junk everywhere and fairly lifeless from what we could observe.

We picked up and made another run to some shallow water looking for bass and critters. Well, there were a lot of critters around.  Being shallow water, it made for easy releases and we got our limits.  I even managed my first big ling of the season!



Plenty of big browns also.



We decided to make our last run to a known big bass spot.  As we were running, I could see some birds working in the distance and plenty of splashing below.  I thought it was small dolphins, and as we got closer, thought they were massive bonito...  Until Squatch yelled 15# yellowtail and everything came into focus!  A 50 Yards swatch of ocean with thousands of 15# yellows full on foaming at the surface... everywhere!

We slowed into position and fired off a colt sniper and iron into the herd of foamers... NOTHING!  We got 2 casts each in before they sunk out leaving behind a sea of "fish scale" glitter!  We box-trolled the area with Rapalas, ready to fire off some irons if they popped up again, but all we found were 60 foot meat balls of bait everywhere!  No real marks and no other signs of the yellows.  DAMN!!!!  It was quite amazing to watch and all in 75' of water!

We continued to the bass spot and picked up some calicos and a turd roller.  I then get slammed and from the hit, thought I hooked a yellow!  POP!  Took my great weedless swim bait with it.  I reeled in to see that 4 feet of line looked frayed and sand papered to a clean cut.  With all that small bait out there, I'm thinking for the second week in a row that I found Mr. T.

That was it, we packed it in and ran back to the ramp listening to all the people catching tuna on the radio and it was driving me nuts!

Steve and I kept 20 rockfish and the 1 deepwater bass he somehow caught.  I caught I don't know how many treefish and barber poles.  Fortunately, most were good for releasing alive since they were in pretty shallow water and funny how Squatch didn't get a single banded rockfish at all?  He did get the only Sheepshead today though that I should have taken a picture of, but oh well.

Steve kept a few for his "Bait Guy" and I was stuck cleaning the rest, but it's plenty of meat for the vacuum sealer and tasty fish fry's in the future!



Thanks for reading and until next tide!

[sasquatch]

If I hadn't seen that yellow swim right next to us we would have gone on believing it was all bonito. Maybe that would have been better.