Sardines....?

[wak'm&stak'm]

As a kid there were no sardines in the bay, and then a few years ago they showed up.
Last year we never jigged any....but yesterday they were thick 5 miles off shore, and I jigged some of the biggest I have seen.
I would like to send some of them to the bottom alive.. :smile:

[Threemuch]

One of the tuna I carked on Friday had a very large baitfish in it's belly. It thought black lable herring, but now that I think about it, it must have been a big dine. Water's too warm for herring out there.

Anyhoo, I wonder if this will change the pattern for tuna to plugs and traps since most of the time, early season tuna are dining on sauries and squid, not sardines.

[Booja 1]

Great idea Dan..Never seen a chinook turn his nose at some live bait...Maybe too if you get lucky and run into a spot of "bait" like that on an albie run,,scoop some up and fish em on the slide as the albies won't care if they be dead or not in that situation.....

Les

[Hook-up]

You may be on to something. One of the tuna we cleaned Friday also had a large bait (black label size) bait in its stomach. One of the others had a bright (just eaten) very small (1.5") shiner like fish in its stomach. The stomachs did not seem very full. There appeared to be tons of birds and bait out to about the Chicken Ranch then they all just seemed to go away as we got to the warmer water. It is sure amazing the difference in the flora and fauna between tempatures.

[Lovestafish]

y'all might find it interesting that my buddy rigged up a big sardine (thawed) with the intent of finding a big halibut last week, and a 5' blue shark took it about halfway down. The fish rolled over several times and got the line above the leader wrapped around it's tail. Fish on! He landed it okay, but it gave him a pretty good tussle. We were kinda surprised it took the sardine on the way down, but have no complaints!