Why Don't I Learn (8/27)

[Latimeria]

I have my daughter and granddaughter moving back into the house soon and need to get some home improvements done so we can fit them.  One thing is a bathroom remodel, since we don't have a shower in that bathroom and need a bit of work to improve it.  One of the contractors has been asking me for years to take him out fishing, but I've been diverting some of the requests for a variety of reasons.  This time he said, "I'll knock 5 bills off the labor if you take me out fishing...."  Well, he found the magic words and shook on it.

He is fascinated with sharks and has been out on 15+ shark trips without even seeing one.  I told him we are targeting 100+ Bluefin and staying away from sharks since I made the mistake to bring the spreader over a 10" mako a month ago and it destroyed my spreader bar.  He said he remembers that from FB, so would love to just see that.  I laughed and said no sharks...  His response was, "But aren't you cursed by them?"   

It started off exactly how I thought it would.... Waiting 90 minutes in my driveway calling him up every 15 minutes trying to wake him up.  He finally showed, but by the time we got to the ramp, it was 7:00 and the boat traffic and line for bait was crazy, so we skipped the bait and planned on just trolling or all artificial.  I actually had frozen, so maybe chunk if neccessary.

Within 5 minutes heading out, I point to a small 4' mako.  He was in disbelief that we saw one so quickly out the inlet.

Water was Clean and WARM as hell!  We saw some mola, a few dolphin and a blue whale.  Things looked fishy. 

I had the spreader bar WWB, a hard bait, and a bird trolling behind the boat at different intervals.  We were both watching behind the boat when in the prop wash we saw 3 times a 2'wide by 4' long tail come up out of the water and a HUGE massive body roll in the white water! I swear it was the biggest shark tail I've ever seen and we were both like WTF!!!!  It totally missed my daisy chain bird for some reason, but low and behold I had my spreader out back.  I made a loop and as I we going back we saw the huge fin...  Great White???  Then it smashed the spreader like 4 times before getting the hook in it and then the aerial show began!  Each jump was 10' out of the water at a constant interval!  Mark started fighting it and I could see his eyes were as big as saucers!  I was definitely nervous just like the last time this happened, but this time at least I had someone on board to witness everything that was happening.

We couldn't gain a whole lot of ground on it and finally broke something.  We kept seeing the f@cker jump and jump, but it wasn't on the line, so I knew the hook was buried in his mouth and it was no longer attached to the spreader bar.

400# leader line.... shreaded.



Steel spreader bar.... literally bent and snapped... along with my 400# snap swivel bent the f@ck up....



8 shell squid and my trailer lure.... gone......



We recouped, re-rigged just in time as the paddies and tuna showed!  Literally paddies everywhere!  Big and loaded with Dodo, that wouldn't bite.



The most gorgeous paddies I've seen all year in 74.5 degree water that was crystal clear!



Between trying everything in the tackle box from trolling bonito feathers to absolutely everything, we couldn't sniff a bite.

Big Bluefin started foaming and trolled the Madmacs through them.... nada

Trolled the spreader right over them.... nada

Then the Ahi showed and giant foamers in every direction.  Colt snipers, poppers, twitch baits, plastics......  right through, over and on top of them... nothing....  This is the most total most frustrating day I've had out there. 

Mark loved it even if we weren't catching anything since he's never seen so many mosh-pit foamers out there in every direction, but we finally called it quits at 4:30pm as I couldn't take it anymore.  I'm usually done for the day by 2:00, but not getting a single fish to bite was making me lose my mind.  Maybe live bait was the key, but we were late to the party to get that.  I say that my first spreader would have killed the tuna, but the mako killed that chance by destroying it....  I also washed my lucky fishing hat, and I won't scratch that as a possibility either for why we didn't catch.

Well, it was still a great day and the mission was accomplished in showing Mark some cool stuff out there.  Got a good discount on the bathroom remodel also, so mission was essentially accomplished even without any fish.

Next time..... Oh next time.....

[jrodda]

Wild with the mako. It would make me hesitate to ever put out a spreader if a mako could come around ruin it. I'd rather they take a single trolling lure or something. Good to hear the life is still out there, even if it's not cooperative right now. I was out there Monday and saw a little mako a couple miles out as well. My 6hp was fresh out of the shop and wouldn't go faster than 8mph at WOT when it's normally around 12-14, so I did a much shorter loop than I planned, and never saw tuna. Saw one of those huge paddies though. Should be down on the 9 some time in the next few days.

[Tim524]

Them sharks have been brutal on you, time to quit poking  Not getting bit when fish are all around the boat is my motto but you can borrow it for a while Saving cash on the remodel sounds good, just be careful cause them remodels tend to snowball on you, pretty soon you have a new house 

[KogaHead]

Leave him at the dock or save $500 on your house work.

Tough decision, I would have left him at the dock.