7/8 – The first of two days I have with my best, and favorite, clients Wright and Wright. We decided to do a half-day for flounder on Saturday morning and do the offshore thing for dolphin on Sunday. Well, the weather was fantastic on Saturday – breezy out of hte north but sunny and very cool. The flounder sure liked it.
We picked away at them all morning – bring about 18 in the boat with 12 keepers (the largest was right under 5lbs), in addition to several seabass, a big hake and two nice gray trout. One of the grays had a surprise for us – he had a clown zo-zuri DD buried in his side (pictured). It had been there a long while too!
7/9 – Day two with Wright and Wright. We had a great forcast for going offshore – the ride out was pleasant until we were around 15-20 miles out. It was a little swelly out there but still extremely comfortable and very fishable. We found some scattered grass and good temps in the 20-25 mile range and decided to give it a shot. Well, I put out the teaser and when i set my first ballyhoo, a 5lb bailer grabbed it within 10 seconds of me putting it in the flat-line clip. After that, it was on – all day long.
We could not go 5 minutes without a knockdown – we went through 3 packs of ballyhoo in just a few hours. We were fighting fish constantly, rigging baits constantly – it was nuts!! Most of the fish were small (nice sized bailers in the 3-7lb range). We jumped off a few fish and had a big king sky 10+ feet into the air on one of my baits but he cut the line.
We did get one nice surprise through – one of my flat lines got hammered and a big mystery fish dumped a TLD-15…taking at least 350+ yards of line. It made several hard runs and would shake it’s head at the end of each run…we were thinking wahoo. Wright #2 pulled on this beast for probably 20 minutes before we got it boatside….and i have never been so dissapointed to catch such a cool fish. It wasn’t a hoo…but a 25lb false albacore (weighed on my boga). It’s probably the largest albie i will ever see.
After we had 20 or so dolphin in the box we trolled weenies with pork rinds for a while, catching several more dolphin to i got to a bottom fishing spot of mine. WE caught lots of nice seabass, a big beeliner, lost a couple of grouper, etc. On the way in we ran across a weedline and decided to give it a try – we caught several bailers on light spinning gear and even got one on the fly! Cool stuff!!
AWESOME WORK GUYS! Can’t wait to have you again!
7/10 – What an adventure today – a frustrating adventure. I took a day to fish with my dad and my sister’s boyfriends. I thought we were going to slay the dolphin, like the day before….but the thunderstorms decided to ruin our day.
It was very calm to start off with and we found a great line – the instant i set my flat lines out we had two big dolphin on…or so we thought. We had one big bull tail-walking behind the boat…and as they fought it closer it became apparent that both kyle and steve were fighting the same fish….he ate both of my flat lines.
Well, this weedline was on fire with big gaffers – we saw them busting fly-fish around us and the action was non-stop. But this big, mean t-storm decided to start growing just a couple mile south of us. So we had to leave the fish biting – it stinks…but safety always comes first.
We decided to end the day trying our hand with some of the monster sharks that are around. We fished for about 90 minutes and immeadiatly hooked up with a nice black-tip, pulled the hooks on two, leadered (and released) a nice 30 or so lb sandbar, and lost a monster freight train of a shark. He ate a hunk of meat under a balloon an pushed a wake like that of a submarine – i have no idea how big that thing was but it was scary! Like usual – the biggest fish hit the line that went to the lightest rod. We had no hope of landing him – and after literally dumping a TLD-20, he broke the line. Cool stuff – shark fishing is fun and really easy!! You don’t have to go very far to hook up with some seriously strong beasts!
We also caught a nice surprise with my anchor (see the picture).
