0 for 4 white marlin

0 for 5 wahoo

0 for 2 swords

1 for 1 mahi

1 for 1 fat albert

15 tiles

12 sea bass

Gathered up a crew of with Ryan, Matt, and Wes and headed out at 10 am Saturday to the Norfolk. 

Nice ride out as the winds laid down beautifully.  Lines in at 1 pm when a saw a color change around 25 fathoms short of the canyon.  Wes picks up a fat albert that fought like he was somebody. 

OK now we start our misses.  One after the other.  Either a short wahoo bite or a white marlin that is messin with us.  One hit even bent the hook.  Hook up a big white marlin (could have been a small blue) and everyone gets a show as he skies several time with acrobatic jumps before pulling the hook. 

Weeds were everywhere..  And they were so scattered you could not get around them.  The crew spent most of the time shaggin.  Continue trolling and we are getting strikes which tells me we are at least doing half the equation correctly.  I've never had so many misses in one trip.  Continue trolling until sunset.

Calculate our drift and the wind and current are opposite.  Will the SE wind win over the northerly current.  No, at least at first the current wins and we are moving 0.1 to 0.2 knots going South.  Decide to do a combination of squid on lights for swords and bunker chunking.  We are moving so dang slow we can't even get the float to move out away from the boat.  So fish with only 3 lines instead of 4, 2 with squid and 1 with bunker.  Ryan gets a nice mahi on the bunker.  The sword light is doing it's job.  Bait all around the boat all night long.  Even a school of peanut mahi hang with us all night.  Can't get any of them to bite but caught this little micro peanut in the dip net.

Other bait around the boat.

Around 11 am a big hit and I grab the rod.  I can tell it's a quality fish, heavy with big head shake.  Now this line is 200 feet down and I feel the head shake.  2 seconds later a big sword skies out of the water right next to the boat.  He is at least 150 lbs.  Solid hook set.  Now this guy is smart.  I'm fighting him on the starboard side.  The guys are frantically clearing the other 2 lines.  The swords runs fast to the stern, then all the way around to the port side, then straight for the bow wrapping the other 2 lines in about 10 seconds.  Can't stop him, can't turn him, he breaks off after about a 30 second fight.  Heartbreaking.  Things slow way down and don't get another run until 3 am.  This time screaming drag, another quality fish.  This time, dreaded tackle failure.  My braid to mono connection becomes unglued and he is gone.  I hate tackle failure.  I tested my double uni with at least 30 lbs and no problems but didn't hold up for this fight.  That's it for night fishing.  At sunrise, get back on the troll.

Continue our streak of getting strikes, pulling drag but no hook-up.  Luck is not on our side today so we go bottom bounce for tiles.   We catch what we want for the box and dinner stopping well short of a limit. 

Ryan gets a 10 lb tile on my hand scale but at the dock only goes 9.6 so no paper today. 

Nice tile and seabass for Wes.

Matt's Tile

Winds shift to NE and picks up to 15 so we run home at 11 am to a long sloppy ride home. 

Lots of action, even some at night.  Seas stayed down nice and flat during the evening.  Only covered 1 mile the entire night.  Once the bright moon went down, the milky way galaxy came out and was beautiful.  We just gazed up looking at this wonder which you can't appreciate here in the city.  It was entertaining watching all the life around the boat the entire night.  Talked with Two Keys who also lost 2 nice swords but did get a tuna on the chunk at night.  Also talked with Wave Runner who boated a 150 lb sword by jigging a ballyhoo.  Then it wrapped his prop but they got it free by jumping in the water to unwrap it and got the sword. 

Great trip, great crew.  Ryan makes a very good cockpit monkey, he knows what he is doing and jumps right in to get it done. 

Until next time.