Well, this offshore story sounds just like my last few. We went out with hopes of hooking a marlin but really wanted to get a last shot at some tuna and other exotics. We heard there was a bigger grade of fish out there, so we went looking.
Weather reports were all over the board, but I will just say it was the roughest day out there this year that we have gone out. Huge wind waves, Big swell... made for a really sloppy time. Even heard the Coast Guard call for small craft advisory after we got out there.
We started trolling since we were moving about that speed anyway and passed a small stinger. I saw the big troller jumping, but it was still in the clip. Steve says "You got kelp on there"... Turns out he kind of right... RAT yellow!
After seeing a few Hammerheads and hours and hours of trolling.. we get a double hookup on the trollers! Dave and I reel up two football yellowfin and even then there was a hammerhead there trying to steal a bite. I cast out a mackerel with the shark rig to catch my first hammerhead, but he wanted no part in that mack. It apparently was well below him to eat mack when he's been feasting on yellowfin I guess.
On the way back home, we decided to run and gun for paddy's since the waves were at our back. We found this bloated- Headless-Flipperless seal that was apparently munched on by sharks. He made quite the slick, but there was nothing in the area to cast to...
We finally see the best paddy of the day which still wasn't too big and cast some dine on it. We ended up catching 15 rat yellows on it with Steve actually getting one that was easily twice as big as all of the others.
We called it the day and made it home safely which is always goal number one. It has been a year of "You should have been here yesterday" or "It went off today, yesterday was a bad day".
Oh well, we caught fish and had a great time out on the water.
Until next tide...
