Squatch and I had plans to hit the inshore humps for Tuna, but the 6 second west intervals on top of the other swell direction and wind waves made for a bumpy ride on the way. It was not long on the way out before we decided to just head down to IB and look for anything closer in. On the way, we passed a small 4 footish mako. There was tons of bait around and we heard a big splash. I casted my brand new flatfall out to see if any yellows were hanging around. Well, that mako turned 180 degrees and shot over at lightning speed and grabbed my jig! As I was fighting it, my line bunched up on the side (full new spool of line) and I had to strip some line off before reeling in again. This gave it time to turn on me and run the teeth across my line. BING! Brand new flat fall gone...
We stop at the pipe and find tones of bait below as well as plenty of fish marks. It was a slow pick, but a steady one. We caught some for the box and released the rest. This Calico was the nicest bass of the day and put up a great fight!
I didn't take pics of all the Oobly Gooblies (Reds, Johnny Bass, Calico Rocks etc), but then I cast the most beautiful swimbait combo out and I get hit hard! It was a nicer grade fish and I thought it was a yellow when the line snipped loose! WTF!?!? All of a sudden, a mako popped up with my swimbait in it's mouth. DAMN! Mako number two stole some more nice gear!
Steve and I continued to pick away including some nice 3# Turd Rollers.
Then I hook what seemed to be a nice bass or possibly a Lingcod. It started to get heavier and heavier and started stripping line. Once again, I thought it was a yellow or WSB possibly. Then it happened again. Line got cut. When Steve asked me what pound test I had, I replied 60# topshot. He didn't appear to believe me or thought I was trying to trick him. All of a sudden, the bass pops up in the mouth of another mako! WTF! I shot the boat over to see if it had my swimbait still in the bass' mouth, but I wasn't going to reach my hand in the water to grab the bass in case the mako tried to taste some people fingers.
I gaffed the poor sucker and no sswimbait in it's mouth.
The shark swam off and we decided to leave. Our goal was to troll until we found birds or a paddy. All of a sudden, we saw a ton of birds on the inside and trolled over to investigate. Terns for miles! Diving Pelicans, Terms, Seagulls! Everywhere! We stopped trolling and just watched for a bit. I'm not kidding when I say the birds stretched for at least 3 miles long and 1 mile wide!
Bait everywhere!
Birds everywhere!
All of a sudden we started to see fish and the finder had some familiar marks on it!
Well, wide open CUDA! So much fun!
Steve got good at having them release at the boat so we didn't have to hold those slimy bastards.
I totally lost count. Steve was hand feeding them the iron next to the boat like he was sunny fishing and they were grabbing it! So nuts!
I tried getting some underwater shots as the amount of biomass around here was ungodly! It's been years since I've caught cuda and probably a decade since I've seen this biomass of it.
Well, It was a long ride back to the ramp. We launched from the South Bay as OTL was going on and MB was going to be a nightmare.
I have to get back to work here, so I will try and get more up on here later.
Thanks for reading!
