Okay time to fess up

Hook-up · 11-02-2003, 01:04 AM

After seeing Popeye's post about possibly going for tuna I figured I might as well fess up. My friend (Serious Fun) and I discussed going for tuna last Monday out of Coos Bay but talked ourselves out of it due to the drive and his limited fishing time that day. So after he picks me up at 0430 we stop for some gas. He starts handing down empty gas cans. I said hey what do you think, are we going tuna fishing or what??? I am of course just kidding. He gets this sheepish look and smiles at me. I think it has been about a month or so since I have heard of anyone catching a tuna but what if... Tuna fever hits me bad. He just happened to check the sea surface temp west of Newport and noticed the last of the warm water heading south just 30 miles west. Well the weather was awesome (3-4 ft lazy swells about 12-13 seconds with a 1-2 foot wind chop) my friend was wearing shorts and a tee shirt. It took us about 1.5 hours to get to some fishable water. We started fishing in 59.5 degree water about 26 miles west of Newport when we saw some dolphins. We decided that we would give it a couple of hours. We ended up about 30 miles out in 60.5 degree water. We of course tried the whole kitchen and the sink...no luck. Well at least we tried. So back to Stonewall bank and whacked the bottom fish. Had to move a bit and change rigs to keep the pesky small orange fish off. But ended up with some nice lings (several 28-30 inchers, there were 4 of us) and a nice selection of other various large bottom fish. My friend also caught one of those large (Humbolt?) squid, about 4 feet long. It put up a really great fight. We did not quite limit but with the time we had we did great. We only saw 2 commerical salmon boats on the bank, but we did see about 8-10 just outside the bay when we went out in the morning. We also saw (and talked with) another boat in our tuna area about 30 miles out. It looked like a sport boat and we thought he was another crazy nut like us who was tuna hunting. He ended up being a commerical boat that was fishing for black cod. He said that this was very profitable for him. What a great day, we even got a bit of a sun burn.

[ 11-02-2003, 02:05 AM: Message edited by: Hook-up ]

Marty · 11-02-2003, 06:24 AM

Terry and Serious Fun with crew........nice try on a nice day. You know, part of the whole tuna magic is just puttin around with all the jigs in the water and looking for life in a huge ocean and takin in all the cool stuff there is to see. I need to fish with you guys again.

Marty

Terry.....you going to Cabo again this year??

Hook-up · 11-03-2003, 10:37 PM

Marty as far as I know we do not have any formal plans to fish Cabo this year. Terry does not lurk on ifish much. I pretty much forward him the interesting stuff (which at times is a lot).
We talk about your adventures but have a hard time hooking up with you and others due to Terry's schedule. As you know he can not just take days off like myself and others, he has to hope for fair weather on his days off. We did have a great year though.
Take care.

Nofish · 11-04-2003, 09:22 AM

Hook-up
We had a similar experience fishing out of Brookings...but it was a wonderful day on the big blue. Have you seen the latest SST for southern Oregon? They've gotta be close - Wednesday's forecast is for 2 feet @ 17 seconds! Cheers...Bob

Hook-up · 11-04-2003, 07:36 PM

Nofish, I have been purposely ignoring them (SST's). They are just two tempting. But you are right it is great getting out there.