I took a personal day and wanted to get out fishing before the offshore storms start to kick up the seas again. The plan was to fish for marlin and wahoo. Anything else was a bonus.
Dropped the boat in and as I was walking back from parking the trailer I passed 5 sets of underwear. I don't even want to know.
(https://i.imgur.com/kR6Jida.jpeg)
My buddy needs to take less coffee grinders...
(https://i.imgur.com/9TgchF1.jpeg)
It was a little windier than predicted and quite a bit more bumpy. We got out to the 178 and metered some fish. We probably should have just started fishing there trolling Mad Macs, but we decided to just run to the 182 instead and hit the 178 on the way back.
Water was gorgeous! No birds or signs of life. An occasional gull and flying fish, but we trolled all over and around the FAD. No one was there so it was pretty nice having it to ourselves.
I finally get a quick hit but it never stuck. I reeled in my "Megabait" to see the steel hook attachment snapped! Everything was gone and this was a solid piece of steel that ran through the lure! WTF?
(https://i.imgur.com/rOg2o9n.jpeg)
We would reel in at any paddies we saw ,which wasn't much, and see who was home. We did pick up some nice marlin baits in case we decided to fly line one in their face if we saw them!
(https://i.imgur.com/zljIrek.jpeg)
We had one knockdown that I was sure was a marlin, but it took off and never charged again. We also 2 more out there just free jumping, but couldn't make it happen.
We decided we were going to troll the 178 to the 9-mile border on the outside then troll back up on the inside to see if we could find something. The marlin guys were all over the 178/9 so we still felt we had a shot.
As we were trolling to the 178, we spot a beauty of a paddy!
(https://i.imgur.com/Aq7Sq1A.jpeg)
Dodo, yellows and little nerf footballs all over the place. My first cast with the jig and I hooked the dodo which proceeded to use the jig as a bullet at my head as it made its final jump next to the boat. It was pretty good fishing and then it just literally shut off.
(https://i.imgur.com/6HHzXNu.jpeg)
We continued the troll when we saw something really close to us just pop up out of the water! My buddy said it looked like a water heater with a pipe. I was like Holy f@ck! Look at that Sub!
(https://i.imgur.com/tm30F85.jpeg)
It was huge and kept maneuvering at us. I'm not sure why but the radar said it was less than 3/4 of a mile away, so we decided to get some more distance between us just in case.
We trolled the entire outside to the border for nothing. Wind picked up and now it was just plain sloppy out there.
(https://i.imgur.com/cNAUP5G.jpeg)
We started trolling home when one of the trollers for tuna went singing! It was totally a nicer grade YFT... the boat near us just caught a 50# model and this one seemed from the same school, but like everything today, we lost him.
Then we started boxing the area and I got SMEARED on the Mad Mac!!!! f@cking violent hit and run but it never stuck. WTF... this was getting annoying. I reeled in the mack to investigate and Holy Hell!
(https://i.imgur.com/iNtLY2L.jpeg)
It looks like wahoo, but I'm no wahoo expert. Tombo saw a bunch of makos out there so it could have been one of them, but the lure was hit in the middle so I'm leaning towards a hoo.
We finally call it quits as it was 6:00 and headed in. As we passed under the bridge, I realized we had our limits of yellows in the bait tank and they were all strong and hardy! I dumped them in the bay for someone to catch. How cool would that be to fish for bay bass and catch a little yellow! Hahahaha
Anyways, a non-productive trip for pelagics but it was worth the PTO to spend all day on the water.
Thanks for reading and until next tide!