Dodo Madness

Attachment 53902Attachment 53899Attachment 53903Attachment 53900Attachment 53904Attachment 53901Attachment 53898Got the call from my good Freind Johny to do a family fishing trip, my kid has been asking to get him on the water, so we made the drive down to San Diego. We launched around 6:30 from the base and headed straight to the bait barge, since it was the weekend, I expected a long line. When we arrived, there was about 15 boats ahead of us, I took this time to go over some basic fishing tips with Steven, he was super excited and paid close attention
I was also very excited to get him on some fish, I knew our chances were good, the reports have been great and the weather was going to be good enough. Once it was getting close to our turn i look back and notice the line of boats behind us had triple, wow I counted 25 boats and just kept going
we picked up 3 scoops of some ok sardines, lots of scales and plenty of floaters. We knew the reports had been saying the Dodos were south but we wanted to stay away from the crowds, so we headed west, we got out about 10 miles and found our first kelps, stopped at 4-5 0f them but nobody home, it was over casted and that made it difficult to spot the paddies also the wind was up just enough to make some small white caps,
we didn't see any birds either i was starting to wonder if we made the right call by going west, we also were not seeing any more kelps
took some time but we came across this small kelp we fished for a couple minutes for until i started winding in my nose pin sardine
and got ripped, fish on!! nice dorado starts jumping out of the water, I pass the Rod over to Steven and he battles it on 25-pound test
I stick the gaff in it and it mission accomplished for the day, Steven got his first DODO, we back to the kelp and give it another go and nada, must have been the only one there :Confused:on to the next paddie , Johny gets instantly bit by a nice bull, it give us a nice airshow and then spits the hook, im noy getting bites, Johny quickly puts out another bait and again gets instantly slammed, pretty sure it was the same bull, this time it hits the deck and we have two, no more bites after that so we continue looking. A couple more empty kelps. And then i see it! just a beautiful full kelp with birds on, :Big Grin::Big Grin: it was all the Dorado you wanted as soon as your bait touched the water you were bit. we basically had 3 fish going the whole time, I let Steven battle most of them and after 5 fish he says go ahead you get this one, as i am fighting this fish i hear Johnys wife Catherine yell out "i need a gaff" without hesitation Steven grabs the gaff and proceeds to gaff his first ever fish! wow I'm impressed I didn't teach him that, the kid got it in one swing and it was a head shot, once the dust settled we had more than enough Dorados for us to enjoy no need to kill any more, we decided to see if we could find some tunas that wanted to play, but no joy. great day on the water with some awesome people, Thank you Johny for the invite and thank you for putting is on the fish, a trip my kid will never forget, enjoy the pictures

Awesome report!!!

Amazing trip and pictures, thanks!

Cya Tuna Vic

Very nice Jaime.
Why don't you ever bring Steven with us?!?

See you soon.

Robert
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