Ok, I'm back. We had a decent weekend. On Friday we ended up with three gaffers and a couple of other knockdowns. One mahi was a 33 lb cow. The weather was beautiful. Much of the fleet went on down to the 850 line and I guess there was a crowd down there. It sounded real spotty for them too from what we saw back at the dock. We were at the triple zeros and a bit south. The bites came on the drone spoon behind the planer and the good ole blue and white ilander/bally combo.
On Saturday Chris (blueh20pc) joined us and we had a bit of a rough ride out to the rock pile. We fished from the pile out to about 50 fathoms without a sniff in the morning and then trolled back to the rock pile. We finally found some fish on the eastern corner. Picked away at them and ended up with 4 gaffers and a wahoo. Missed a couple more bites. Chris made a great save on the hoo at the boat when I blew the gaff shot and it ran under the boat and motors. He got it slipped off of the lower unit before it wrapped up and I got it on the next pass.
The hoo hit a black and red ilander/bally and the mahis were a bit mixed on seawitch bally combos and the blue and white ilander again.
Water was in the low 70's. TONS of flying fish. We marked some OK bait at about 20 fathoms down but there just didn't seem to be much going on. Several boats ended up skunked of with just a fish or two. It seems they got into the tuna a bit better up near the 230 rocks from what we heard.
We headed in early on Saturday due to the conditions out at the rock pile. I've seen the inlet real ugly in a southwest swell and I didn't want to go through that again! Based on the tide the day before I wanted to beat the ebb. Got in before the tide really got ripping but it was much calmer inside so I think we could have stayed out another couple of hours. Oh well. There's some saying about discretion and valor but mostly I just don't like getting the crap scared out of me when I'm fishing!
Thanks again Chris and I really hope to do it again.
