2/3's of the doughballs
All the salmon and halibut talk couldn’t scratch our plans for Tuna! on Saturday. We ran into Capt.Dan! and Pilar at the store Saturday morning. They said they were going to run from Newport for Tuna! and head to the pile if things turned sour. Edsr, myself and a newbie (Chief Slapaho as Edsr dubbed him) gave this no thinking as our plans were firm. We hit an empty Depoe ramp and headed for blue water.
Out through the hole and we found some slow rollers, but nothing the Dory wasn’t built for. Crested a few of them and then came the mother load. Two big steep waves! We could see the first wave starting to break and the worst went through my mind. Edsr calmly helmed the wave, only to have the motor stall after we banged onto the backside of it. I thought we were done! With the motor started back up and the second wave starting to break we crested it only to find ourselves on the edge of a huge pile of kelp. We had no choice but to motor through it. Turning away from the waves to get out of the kelp was out of the question. We motored through the kelp keeping the bow into the swells, dragging seaweed from the motor and partially plugging the water intake which cause the overheat light to come on momentarily. So after we cleaned our shorts… we headed for the mark. I think we figured that we had gone to far north away from the jaws, rather than heading straight for the red can. We know better now!
A few miles from the spot we realize that the temperature sensor on the fish finder is acting funning. “We can’t still be in 55 degree water!” The water wasn’t 55 degrees to the touch, but it wasn’t the 61 we were looking for either. Having few other options we drop the gear and proceed to troll west. After what felt like an eternity, we picked up and headed NW to an area that we new was 61 degrees based on the radio chat from the Tacklebuster. He was heading further west based on a phone conversation with someone who was looking at the latest SST report. (I heard they went out 50+ miles and brought home 30 tuna)
We slowed a few miles from the new mark and tossed out the gear. We lost our first fish a few minutes later on an Edsr cedar plug special. We landed the first fish a few minutes later on a hand line and rest was history. We made the newbie reel the first two fish in to show him the difference between the hand lines and rod and reel. He agreed with us and decided the hand lines were much more productive! Although I forgot to slow the boat when he was reeling, this made it a bit tougher for him. At the cleaning station, Wildhawg agreed that not slowing the boat was part of his initiation.
We decided to make one more pass to try and up our tally of fish, we only had five fish at this point. On the way back through we hit our first double of the day, followed by 5 consecutive fish, one that was dry fly teased by Edsr and three that came from another BOE special that looked liked nothing you’ve ever seen before. Last fish was pulled in off a diver while we were pulling in gear. It was the last hand line in the water!
We then turned the GPS towards home, 40 plus miles away! What a long bumpy ride.
We ended the day with 13 fish. Only one smaller than 20 and a couple that were pushing the 30 pound class.
Maybe Edsr has the pics. Mind didn't turn out to well...
To be continued....
__________________
they're all dead sir, they're all dead
|
Sea Jypzee
Linear Mode
