a little late getting this up and I don't even know where to start. such an eventful day. First tuna on the topwater which was cool. biggest tuna on spinning gear. first tuna on the mini rod. 6 tuna tipping 40lbs in one trip which is almost unheard of here for the Salty rods charters. most large tuna are caught with parachutes and deep jigging. most of the customers for SRF (salty rods fishing) are beginners so we hook them up with Penn levelwinds, 50lb mono and dead bait.
hooked up on the popper! Daiwa Saltiga 6500 loaded with PE6 line (shimano and its 99lb but 70lb diameter). these tuna were ripping drag after the strike! longest fight was about 6-7 minutes just because they would dive so deep!
one
and two. not even sure which was which.
my buddy was using my mini rod I built and landed a couple large mahi and a small tuna on it. I decided I wanted to try for a bigger tuna and I hate drifting dead bait. so I pinned on the prettiest anchovie I could find, sunk my hook in it the best I could to hide the hook and sent it out with 1oz of weight. within a couple minutes a trigger fish took half the anchovie. I pretty much said "screw it" and put the ugliest whole anchovie available on the hook and dropped it over. peeled off about 100ft of line pretty quick and set it in gear. drifted it for about 5 minutes and we were off the school. the captain told us to reel up to reset the drift and before I could turn the handle I felt a tug.... then it pulled a little line.
a little video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0HXGqCwFCoand voila! TUNA!
on our next drift a blue shark came up to the boat and kept the Mahi at bay. it wouldn't leave no matter how much we harassed it so I roughed her up a little. sent her on her way shortly after and she didn't come back. No I didn't harm her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ku5D8yq32Umade it back to port and emptied the fish hold.
not a bad day. I guess people didn't realize how much meat you get off a large tuna a mahi so almost all of those small skips and YFT made it in my freezer for shark bait. lol
