Dead Bodies and Attacking Boobies (8/24)

[Latimeria]

I finally got the boat fired up after months and decided to have a look at the ocean.  Steve met me at 6:00 am at the ramp and we slowly made our way out.  Little did we know, but we drove right by a dead floating body.  Thankfully someone else discovered it and not us.

https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/08/24/body-found-in-water-near-fiesta-island/

We headed to the 9-mile to see if anything was going on.  We didn't have plans on going to the parking lot at the 302 and 371.
Bait balls of anchovie were everywhere!  I haven't seen so much bait in a really long time, but there was nothing preying on it.  No marks, no splashes, no nothing.  We passed a small mako and I didn't even want to bother with it, so we just kept trolling by. 



We were a few miles up the ridge, when my long troller goes off.  I was thinking Tuna, but turned out to be a mako that wrapped in every troller we had.  Couldn't unwrap him and it was a cluster.  Since he was a male and we had no way of reviving or releasing him, we kept him as sacrifice to the BBQ gods.



We decided to go inside and look for yellows as we saw nothing offshore and the water turned really green on us.  As we were heading in, we passed a killer kelp paddy.

I start casting my 10# bass gear and BAM!  Some yellers in the boat!



Steve got one that tangled in the kelp, so we had to gaff him out of the kelp which slowed things down, but it was a great quick little run of 5# fish.



So... I'm sure it was a Gannett, but it could have been a massive Boobie.  It had the color of a Gannett though with all white body, brown/black wing tips and an orange crown on it's head. 
I was ripping in a megabait style iron as fast as I can reel and all of a sudden, a bird comes shooting down like a bullet out of the sky!  Just exactly like you see in Wicked Tuna....
f@cking bird almost swallowed the iron it hit so hard, but the treble hook prevented it.
As I reeled in the bird and grabbed it, I realized I had something I'm not sure what it was.  Boobie?  Gannett?  All of a sudden, it's head slipped my grip, and it latched on!  YIKES!  That bill was razor sharp and sliced a section of meat off my finger like a cheese slicer!  As I yelled, it turned around and grabbed Steve's thunb!  WTF!  As I bled on it, Steve finished getting the hook out and we just threw it back in the air to get this nasty thing away from us.  No pictures, even though we should have got one, but I was just happy to get it off my boat.

Now back to fishing....

I thought I kept seeing Blue Perch under the boat in 2,000' of water and apparently I did!  Steve got one on the iron!  Big suckers too!



Well, that was about it.  We ran inshore and saw my buddy looking for halibut so talked to him for a bit.  We couldn't really troll since there was too much grass in the water and called it quits.

We get back to the ramp to see a chunk of Fiesta Island all closed off and see the news.

Fun day on the water and will get the rust shaken off little by little here.

[sasquatch]

Crazy how much bait with nothing on it.

Hope not to mess with one of those birds again.

[Pinoyfisher]

That's a big halfmoon!!

[BenCantrell]

Awesome trip guys!