My shoulder was toast, but I needed another shot at marlin. I reset the Curmudgeon to fish and only planned on hitting the water from 6-12. The forecast seemed it would be the best day all week, so I needed to get out there again and try to redeem myself for the lost marlin.
I headed straight out to where I was on Saturday and the forecast was totally wrong! It was windy and choppy the entire way out! Ugh... I get out there and start trolling. There are like 4 other boats all doing the same thing and looked suspiciously like fishing for wahoo and marlin.
I had zero hits and was wet from all of the spray coming over the rails when I saw the big paddy! I ran over and started casting my little iron and instantaneously caught 4 tiny yellows in a row, but there were dodo all over the paddy! Then a guy in his 36' Pursuit trolled right next to the paddy as I'm fishing it but no time to get pissed. I pulled in a few small YFT (Nerf football size) and even hooked a few of the dodo that launched my iron like a missile when they jumped!
I was ready to tie on a better lure to get the dodo when I hear cop sounds behind me. There was a navy boat behind me saying I had to clear the area. There were 4 other boats around, but he shot up to me first. I was like "Are you kidding?" "There's a million miles of abyssal plains for you to do drills but you have to park it over the ridge everyone comes to fish?"... He said I need to be 7-miles from this location in a north easterly direction at bearing blah blah blah...
He didn't like that very much, so I complied and started heading in that direction as well as the big Pursuit that kept trolling around me.
He shot over to another boat and kicked them out before moving to the next boat and doing the same. I got a mile away and said f@ck it and threw the trollers back out and the Pursuit did the same. We were heading exactly on the course he said to go. Then the Pursuit hailed me and said to look back... There was that Navy Squid all up on my ass telling me to go. I said "I can only go 15 tops in these seas and I'm trolling at 10, what's the difference, I'm heading to where you told me to head". Well, he didn't like that even more and gave me a final warning so I reeled up the rods and gave him the big final bird before running again. I know he saw it because his loud speaker said something the minute I did it.
I got about 5 miles away and said f@ck him and put the trollers out. I saw more mantras jumping and flying fish, but was on the outside ledge of the shelf before getting into rockfish land. As I was going, I saw a big Mola that followed me around and more mantas jumping. Then I caught a glimpse of it again and it was a marlin! I pretty much had everything reeled in except my marlin gear and started boxing the area. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!
Literally 5 seconds and one jump later he was off. 10 more circles and I decided I was done.
On the way in, I found a paddy and started using my little bass jig on it. Well, no ahi... or wahoo.... But TONS of tiny yellows! I caught about 12 and released before packing it in for the barn.
No fish in the bag for me but also a lot less cleaning when I got home. My shoulder is a wreck, but it felt good to get the boat out 2x in a weekend.
Thanks for reading and pictures to come later.
Great report, that's some real bullsh!t with the navy. I would have done all the same as you. At least you found a ton of willing biters.