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Saw what I thought was a
good weather window for Thursday evening so headed out with a crew of
Greg (sfcallen), Kevin (alby man), Ken, and son Michael Jr. Had a bumpy
quartering head sea from the NE wind still blowing 10-15.
Put lines in the little 10 fathom lump just north of the cigar and
picked up a fat albert quickly. The guy thought he was somebody peeling
off drag making us think we had a quality fish. Picked up another fat
albert near the weather buoy. We continue to head SE into the briny
abyss trying to find a good place to set up for the night. Never really
found any good place so with the sun going down stop trolling and put
out the drift spread. Seas never laid down, in fact stayed NE to N 15
most of the night making things bumpy all night. I think it laid down
between 2 am and 3:30 am but picked back after that.
Plan was to do a combination of sword fishing and chunk with butters but
we all got a big case of the lazies with the rolly seas, no marks, no
baitfish around the swordlight so we just let the big squid drift the
night. Had one squid down very deep around 500-600 feet and 3 others at
depths above that. Not a pull all night and we covered about 8 miles
with a 1 knot S to SW drift. At around 4 am, we saw some big tuna in our
swordlight so started to chunk the butters and put some butters down on
circle hooks. Tuna disappeared but did manage a bailer mahi on the
butters.
At sunrise, we put the trolling spread out but due to the NW winds
picking up and now very rolling seas, we put out a minimal spread of
only 7 rods. Tough to see the spread and any fish checking things out
with the steep waves with no backs and white caps. At around the 100
line at 40 fathoms, we saw some birds picking and went 0 for 3 on the
white marlins despite some great dropbacks. Worked the area for a while
and decide to start trolling inshore to hopefully get us out of the slop
and put us closer to home. Talked with Conner on C-Note who was braving
the seas too...I hope he found some billfish somewhere.
Troll, troll, troll, and finally way inshore of the cigar at 14 fathoms,
Kevin picks up a nice wahoo on his planer rod with a red/black island
with medium ballyhoo on wire.

Troll more until about 2:30 and we have all had enough so put the spread
away and make our way home to a quartering head sea into NW winds. Did I
mention a quartering head on the way out...how did I manage a freaking
head sea in both directions.
Had a great crew just not much fish and crappy unpredicted seas. Good
fishing with a new crew member, Kevin (alby man). Great to have him in
the cockpit.
Final tally:
2 for 2 fat alberts (kept for bait)
1 for 1 mahi
0 for 3 dirty white boys
1 for 1 wahoo
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