Westport Update: 198 Fish Day on The Advantage
Went on the Advantage out of Westport Thursday evening for an all day fishing event on Friday with 7 other friends. We left around 2AM and it was a pretty smooth ride out to tuna town. Skipper Geoff Grillo got us out there at about 4:30, so I decided to try a glow in the dark iron. Hooked into numerous 3-5 ft Humboldt squid, but no fish. Didn't see any evidence of bigger bait fish, otherwise I'd have caught the bigger bait to later fish deep. Started to troll at first light, and couldn't go 1/2 mile without hookups. Baitfishing ensued, with tight lines all over the rail. The fish would go away, and we'd troll and repeat, troll and repeat. Live bait is such the way to go! We counted fish and put them is the boats' crab hold at 7:30 or so, and we were at 40 fish for 8 of us. By 9:00 we were at 70. It was just lights out. Everyone did a good job of not crossing lines for as many fish that were simultaneously hooked up.
I got into 5 with swimbaits as we slowed from trolling hookups. No nibbles on the swimbaits, just hammered them. About 32# was the biggest for the boat. Jumpers were all over. When the bite slowed, we'd see birds and jumpers within 500 yards, and off we'd go. Seriously, we couldn't troll for more than 10-15 minutes without hooking up. I counted two times we had fish on all eight rods! By 2:00, we were running out of space and ice with the count at about 175 fish. We decided to totally plug the boat and fished until 2:45 and ended up with an unofficial count of 198. Into port before dark. Ocean was perfect - 3 foot swell at 9-10 seconds with tiny wind chop.
Hats off to the crew who cleaned fish from 9PM to 6AM after a long day and a long previous night.
We all ended up with about 150# of loins. Just finished vacuum packing, canning for the first time (Thanks iFishers for all of the pointers!), and the last batch is getting ready to go in the smoker!
I can't wait to get back out and get bloody again!
__________________
Intelligence has its limits. Stupidity is not so constrained.
Last edited by Jakiedog; 09-03-2007 at 02:27 PM.
Reason: pressed "enter" too soon!
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