Mean Fish... (5/14)

[Latimeria]

Got the call to get out on my buddy's Center Console (same size as Tim's new boat....  wink wink).  He said he has his buddy coming out and is a good luck charm.  I didn't realize until after we got out on the water, this was his first offshore fishing adventure ever...  He must have lost his weight in chumming overboard the entire day.  hahahaha

Anyway, we launched at 3:00 and found an empty receiver.  Last time we got a scoop and a half, but decided on only a half this time as we barely touched it prior.



Coming out the channel and it looked like Battlestar Gallactica was coming in!



The ride out was smooth as I've ever been on his boat.  While they chatted at the helm, I took a nap on the back bench.



First stop was the 425.  Loaded with bai and metered fish 50-100 feet down, but no birds or anything in the area to keep us there, so we made the run to the Upper Hidden.  There we were greeted with tons of terns, crashing bluefin (30-60# class) as well as a bunch of boats!  Water was clean, but quite green for tuna, so we started trolling until we got our other rigs ready.



We kept stopping and dropping sinker rigs, knife jigs, butterfly jigs, flylined dine, shooting out sub walkers and colt snipers into breaking and metering fish for nothing.  We would reel right through the foamers and watch them start to roll on the lure and then turn, or just ignore a live dine on light line completely..  Utterly Maddening!

I then looked back and saw something swimming behind the boat.  It looked like a Blue Doggy, so I wasn't getting skunked and tossed out a circle hook live dine.  Friggand dog wanted nothing to do with it.  I ripped the dine in half and dropped him back in twitching and leaving a blood trail... I guess that's what he wanted and I got the skunk off the board!  Shaun's buddy was amazed as he is an inland Texas military guy who pretty much only fished streams, lakes and ponds before so was stoked to see it.



Damn little thing had more twisting power than a Soupie!





We were getting fed up with all the boats and breaking fish, so worked the south end of the upper to the lower hidden and breaking fish with lock jaw everywhere!  Found a Mola with a ton of wiggles with eyes around it, so guess that's what the bluefin are feeding on.  Water would switch from almost Blue to clean green to dirty green in a short time.  BFT were in all three, but we tried to stay in the clean stuff.



Finally, we made the decision to just troll the spreader bar.  Forest was summoning whatever remaining fluids he had in his body to chum, so we just wanted to keep moving. 



All of a sudden, in between a few schools of 30-60 pound fish, the spreader explodes and the clicker starts screaming!  I'm the rod man and my buddy perfectly got the boat in position as we were sure we had our cow!  This one was so much meaner and stronger than the one I caught last week!  Holy hell, I couldn't believe the drag I had on and how pissed this guy was.  We kept thinking it was going to be bigger and bigger, but apparently only a mean and pissed off one!  It was a Butterball, but nowhere near as big as he made himself feel like!

116# per formula.  We should have washed her down first, but we were trying to get the spreader back out so we could get another and things worked pretty fast at this point!
Blood Bath!



We couldn't fit the body in the kill bag, so we removed the head... So Macabre... LOL



We trolled and stopped on fish for the next 6 hours for nothing....  A few short strikes on the spreader bar, but missed... but that was it.  Our poor guy on board had it as he wouldn't even drink water in the fear of having to puke again, but he powered through it.  We decided to run for home since we were down at the upper 500 at this point.

On the way back, I saw a weird cloud.  I took my sunglasses off and the weirdness went away...  So I I tried something.









Super cool atmospheric event!

As we were passing the South Coronado, we saw about 3 dozen tuna pens and a TON of commercial boats.  I thought the islands were a national preserve that needed a wrist band to fish, but it looked terrible down there.



I got really sunburned and the ride home I was freezing! 



We finally got back to the point at dark and a successful trip!  I'm really stoked fighting these monsters... They are totally another kind of beast, and I want to get one on my little boat!



Thanks for reading and They are truly annoying fish, but so worth it when they decide to play, especially for real animals in the triple digits!

[vdisney]

Great write up Tom, I've checked here twice today looking for the report

[Farmer_Joey]

Hell yeah that's better than we did on an overnight on the t-bird from Thursday-Friday. I was the only one on the trip to get a bluefin to bite and it bit me off within 5 seconds.

[Tim524]

 Wow, another beast ,Congrats again I hope to get that skill level but first I will try for Yellowtail closer to land  That's my goal for this Summer, if the wind ever quits Nice fish, Tom, hope the recovery isn't too bad from that fight

[jrodda]

Starting to make it look easy Tom, congrats on another nice one!

[Latimeria]

Just been lucky the last few weeks, and I have no complaints about this good luck for a change. Hahaha

It's all a team effort on a 24' CC. Lot's to do and going on when the clicker sings. Rod man and boat maneuvering totally essential with animals of this size. I can't even imagine doubling the weight fighting a cow!

[SevengillTheVC]

Who needs surf sharks when you're getting nice bluefin?! Nice Tom!