Well, today was Woody and Andy (Woody's son) day on the water to chase down some tuna. We headed out of Depoe Bay at 05:00 this morning heading for the tuna grounds. On the way out offshore, happened to hit a submerged log in the water. :depressed: [img]graemlins/1zhelp.gif[/img] It ran up the starboard side, and came out the back. Immediately, I stopped the boat, and began checking things out. No structural damage, then moved onto check mechanical....rudders checked out fine...port engine fine, however starboard side has a new vibration when it gets up above about 2000 rpm. I figure that it likely took a bite out of the prop on that side. :shocked: :shocked: Will have a diver go down and check it out completly in next day or two hopefully.
Anyway, so decided to abort the tuna trip at that point due to not wanting to cause additional damage from the vibration...so we decided that we'd just go ahead and troll for some salmon while out...put out the salmon gear and soon had a boat limit of Coho salmon in the box. Also picked up the smallest Chinook salmon I've ever caught. Was a smolt about 8" long that decided it wanted to take a bite out of a Coyote spoon. Thankfully it was seemingly uninjured, so back into the drink it went to grow up so he can make someone else happy a few years from now.
Once we got all our salmon, we decided to hop on out to a deep water bottom fishing hole to try for some nice Ling Cod. Just ran out slower than normal to keep the vibration down, engine ran fine, and with bronze? brass? props knew that there was little chance of anything else taking the damage instead of the prop.
We got out to the deep hole, and the ocean was way too rough to try to fish on the bottom in 500' of water. I got to looking around at the water color and it was clear but mostly green...we talked about it and decided to go for it and give it a shot for some tuna while we were out there. So in went the tuna gear.
We trolled NNW for the most part. We managed to only boat 2 Albies, went all the way upto N 45 04, W124 29. The wind was blowing about 20-25 offshore, and the ocean was very rough. Had a hard time keeping the lines straight even.
On the plus side, Woody and Andy are NO LONGER Tuna Virgins!!
[img]graemlins/applause.gif[/img]
I was planning on making a tuna run tomorrow but am cancelling it as of now. Ocean is crappy on the outside, and the fish are still too scattered.
Save yourselves the gas for anyone even considering going this week. Not worth it in all honesty.
Final Count: 6 Coho, 1 SMALL Chinook (back in the drink), 2 Albacore (25lb range) and a 4' Blue Shark (back in the drink once I recovered my tuna gear from it).
[ 08-11-2003, 04:50 PM: Message edited by: Sea Jypzee ]
Sea Jypzee
Tough one but still a win for the day
Good fishing SJ 
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