9-Mile Bank or Bust (9/25)

[Latimeria]

Weather forecast looked favorable.  small 2-3' swells at 10 second or more intervals.  Light westerly winds 10 knots or less....  You know why I'm starting with this, right???

Reality... Washing machine.  11-20knot winds from the SSW.  Absolutely soaked beat to hell by the time I got to the 9-mike, but hoping conditions would flatten out around 9:00 as what usually occurs as the forecast was still the same on the VHF all morning. 

Overcast, and really bumpy so hard to find any kelp.  Water was absolutely beautiful, clean and warm at 72-73.  There gotta be dodo around!  Birds and Dolphin everywhere, but no signs of fish and no marks on the meter anywhere.  Water finally started flattening up and would troll around looking for kelp.  No bait, so I was going to have to do it the hard way.





First kelp was dryer than Death Valley.  Second Kelp didn't even have a kelp bug on the leaves. Third kelp, I just slung out a small 15g jig on the bass gear and got bumped, but missed it.  I finally get bumped again close to the boat and swung on it.  I watched my jig with a DFG stocker trout sized yellowtail come flying out of the water over my head and threw it like a trebuchet 20 yards behind me!  hahaha!  I get another one and it shakes off as i try to swing it on board.  These yellowtail couldn't have been more than 3/4 of a pound at most!  After I lost the second one, they scattered and that was it.

Lots of Brown Boobies flying around and diving on that small bait..  almost gave me flashbacks of that damn Gannet I caught last year.



I kept trolling for nothing, but it felt great to be at the 9-mile legit for the first time this year and I just kept scanning for life.  I found a number of paddies after that and they were loaded with small baits.  I caught a mackerel on one and almost had some blue perch.  Without any bait, it was hard to get them to hit the jig.

Finally I was getting close to calling it as the wind started to pick up again and I see a big military style boat running at me full bore!  WTF?!? 
Well, it was a Coast Guard inspection...  Super nice people, but they were very similar to the last time when we got checked by the Mexican Navy.  One guy talked to me while the other six just stood and observed.  I gave them my info and knew they were all checking my boat because they saw some old pill bottles I was using as "dry storage" for batteries and lip balm tucked away that I can't believe they could even see it!  I opened it for them and they thanked me as they were on their way to grabbing another center console that flew on by.



Well that's about it.  I was hoping to find some bonito on the way in, but I couldn't believe how dead things were.  It was more miss for all the radio chatter, but I did hear a few boats get into some decent YFT fishing in the 30-40 pound class.  Oh well, a good "Search and See what I could See"  mission.

Thanks for reading!

[1morecast]

I saw the full day boat counts drop from last week. I was expecting to read that you ran into some YFT. At least the conditions cleared up.