Closing Out My 2019 Offshore Scene (11/9)

[Latimeria]

Buddy said the big BFT and YFT were snapping at the Butterfly, so we got our gear together and hitched up his boat at 1am.  Dropped the boat in and was ready to take off when all of the lights turn off on his boat.  We couldn't find the problem, so we put the boat back on the trailer to kill all the power to the boat as not kill ourselves.



Shaun found the problem as the main breaker fuse blew, but weirdly enough all of the other fuses to the individual electronics were okay.  In any case, he bypassed some fuses and had a temporary fix at least.  Got to the receivers soon as the guys were heading in for a shift change...

Fog was pretty thick.





Baits were small sardine and not exactly bait for a big bluefin.  We planned on spending an hour looking for live macks before heading offshore.



No bait to be found, well millions of anchovies all over splashing the surface, but no macks chasing them.

It was a long bumpy, windy and wet ride out.  We surprisingly found a paddy by spotting a few birds on it about 35 miles out.  We stopped and it was full of yellers! We picked up our limit and just felt like tuna would show up.  Instead a HUGE male sea lion shows up out of nowhere and starts to jump in the middle of the paddy and break it up while chasing all the fish off of it.  f@cking dog was lucky I wasn't armed or he might have got some copper coated lead in his head! These things are just terrible....



We started to troll away from the paddy while we were cleaning the fish for a ice brine to keep them super fresh.  His fish alarm started going off saying there was fish under the boat and soon as it started beeping, my troller went off.  Big Skippy and super bright colored!



We started casting the snipers and irons, but couldn't get anything to commit.  We were still 18+ miles away, so picked up the gear and went as fast as the terrible conditions would allow us to go.  We found the entire long range fleet there, but no one was catching anything.  Radio chatter had limits of yellowfin at the corner, but that was 22+ miles straight into 3-4' sharp wind waves on top of 3-6' swells so that wasn't happening quickly.

We continued to troll and had one quick knock down but nothing came out of it.  We decided to pick up and get on home since we were still over 4 hours away from getting back.  We pass a few small paddies before finding another decent one and it was loaded with yellows!  Shaun even caught one reeling in one of the trollers trying to clear the deck so we could fish it!

Basically every cast yellows.  All released since we already had our limit.  Fished it until the fish stopped biting and started racing home.

Water started to calm a bit wind dying wind and inshore seas, but not before it kicked the crap out of us!





Got in after dark and I was beat to sh!t.  I was up for 39 straight hours and still needed to wash the boat.  UGh..

Anyway, it was a fun trip to a point and I "sort of" got my first tuna of the year.  I can't believe it took me so long as my 2019 offshore scene (Private boat only) has pretty much sucked for everything but yellows.

Thanks for reading and until next tide!

[sasquatch]

I was scheduled to take s trip today. Got canceled with no explanation.

Facebook said it was his wife's birthday. Oops.

[vdisney]

Got in after dark and I was beat to sh!t.  I was up for 39 straight hours and still needed to wash the boat.  UGh..

Damn dude, you're an animal...........that or I'm just getting old   

[jrodda]

Can't believe you went out without sleep. At least you came back with something but a bummer not to get into the BFT this year. Looks like it's been spectacular but money was an  issue this year for me.

[BenCantrell]

Nice job on the yellowtails and skipjack!