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Limited Load Long Range Sportfishing
Limited Load Long Range Sportfishing
Aug. 14
Arrive depart today. We offloaded a beautiful catch, got fuel, changed oil + fuel filters, swapped out some crew and left the dock by 10:00. We're good. We left on a very long running charter called the Heil charter. I won't go into our bait loading, I'll just say we have some bait on board. We were in the fishing grounds before 3:00 this afternoon. The couple boats that departed yesterday had some good yellow finning. When we got there it just had that "should've been here yesterday" kind of feel to it. We didn't see much. We had one long drift where we picked up 14 but other then that it didn't feel like we were going to get a hit so we rolled out of that zone. Below there didn't look much better until right around 8:00 when the sun fell we had a good old fashioned blind jig strike that resulted in a good stop. We always fish till the end over here and tonight we were rewarded. The fish bit full speed but only for a flash but it was long enough to get everyone on board at least one with many getting three or more. They were snapping. I call departure fish free fish because we weren't even supposed to be fishing. They're free. Anyways we're going to fish again tomorrow. See you then.
Drew and crew
Oh yeah, the weather is still sooo nice. We're going to have to pay for this stretch.
Aug. 15
We started our morning off in the local bluefin zone. We caught 12 of them, 2 of them being the 50+ pounders while the rest were that beautiful manageable 30-40 pound fish and we caught a few yellowfin. On drift number 2 we hooked and lost one. Do to the amount of boats thinking the same thing we were and the lack of fish I was seeing being brought over the rail, I decided to leave early and look for yellowfin for a while. It wasn't long before we found some, and then some more, and then some more. It pretty much was like that for as long as we fished it which was until after 5 when we went back to the zone where we started. We had good fishing pretty much all day long. The only negative thing about it was the grade of fish was a bit on the smaller side. They weren't runts but they weren't great either. 12 pounds is the short version. They averaged out to be 12 pounders. We looked all around for a bigger grade but it pretty much was what it was. I did think that the area we finished up in yellowfin wise had quite a few more 20 pounders mixed in than what we'd been fishing so it may be something to look at tomorrow. We finished up right where we started and we had a long 2 1/2 hour drift. We caught a yellowfin every once in a while, we landed 4 of the 30-40 pound bf's and caught 1 70ish pounder and lost at least 4 of those. We are going to drift tonight and do it again tomorrow.
Drew and crew
Aug 16
We started our morning off again in the local bluefin zone. Things felt a little better. There were only about half the boats that were there the day before. It had a much less claustrophobic feel to it. Unfortunately the bluefin didn't seem to care. It was on the slow side. In 4 hours we managed 9 of them with 20 yellowfin to go along with them. We left for the day and looked around for schools. We scratched here and there throughout the day. We had some reports of spots of 100+ pounders up so we made it there for the evening hit but never found a school of those. We did catch some nice grade yellowfin though so with those and the sign of the 100 + pounders we know where we're starting tomorrow. But first things first, we're going to run into the beach and try for bait tonight and as I write this we just finished up and we're headed back out with a couple tanks of mackerel and a couple tanks of sardine that we still have for ammo.
Drew and crew
Aug. 17
Today almost went as planned except for the lack of yellowfin. We were supposed to scratch pretty good at the yellowfin in the morning, like 40 or so and then get on that big bluefin, and then scratch out another 30 or so yellowfin in the evening. Well we did the middle part but the numbers were lower on the sides. We saw plenty of that yellowfin, it just didn't bite well. On with the cool part. We found a mega school of that 70-100+ pound bluefin mid morning. It's been a long time since I've seen a mega school and every time I do I forget about the time before and I think it's the biggest school I've ever seen and that's how today was. Of course it didn't bite, but for me up in the wheel house where I can see it well it was incredible. Just the area of fish was monstrous, and when you add in all the shiners and thousands of black backs swimming through, it's amazing. We fished it for 4 hours on different attempts. On the first, the youngster Brendan hooked up and landed about an 80 pounder. On the second, his dad Scott hooked up and lost it and we hooked and lost another one. On the third, Scott hooked up again but this time he landed his 107 pounder. So far it's looking like we'll have a father- son jack pot. On the next few tries we got no reaction so we let it regroup for a while and a couple hours later we found it again and we hooked two more and lost them both and we missed a bite on the kite. We tried it one more time after that for no reaction before we left it for good. We're going to fish again tomorrow. We'll make a small move and relocate but as things are right now, we don't need much more yellowfin so we'll concentrate on the other kind of tuna.
Drew and crew
Aug. 18
We fished today in the local bluefin zone. We scratched at the yellowfin and picked at the bluefin for 5 hours this morning. Scratch means we were getting a few here and there and pick means we were getting one here and there. In the morning the blues were mostly 25-45 pounds and we caught half a dozen or so 60-70 pounders. Between noon and 5:00 PM we drove around looking for fish with not much luck and we went back to the blue zone for the evening session and had a real good evening. We picked up 7 more 60-80 pounders and the yellowfin got on us a couple times and we couldn't stop catching it until after dark. One post it note I made today was BBB. It's a reminder to tell you about a regular passenger of ours by the name of Bill Byler. If you don't know Bill he is one of those loud mouth, smart mouth old retired fireman guys and he's awesome. He is a load of fun. Anyways he was hooked up onto one of those big Bluefins late today and I heard Gunny tell him his boots were on back wards. I thought it was just a joke but sure enough, his darn boots were on the wrong feet. He said he was wondering why his feet hurt so much. I never seen that before. He ended up catching 2 of those tonight.
The last couple days have been choppy out here but today it was very nice. We get in tomorrow and leave again for 4. See you then.
Drew and crew
