Yellowfin Tuna biting on the Toronado (no rats allowed!)
It's funny because fishing is all about expectations! In some way's I was disappointed about this trip. I caught 6 Yellowfin Tuna from 20-50 pounds and if I caught these fish a month ago, I would have been praising Jesus for blessing me. Let me back up and explain my horse arse logic!
This fishing season been kinda tough on size unless you were BFT fishing. The Yellowtail have been mostly 6-8 pounders early in the season then #12-18 later on. The Yellowfin Tuna all season have been mostly 5-12 pounders, so in comparison my catch would have been phenomenal! So how in the world could I possibly been a little disappointed??? Because for the prior 4 days before that the fishing was epic!!!! (not just excellent!)
It started about 10 day's before my trip. All the boats were catching limits of 40-80 pound BFT! Then the weather went a little wonky (a poor buddy of mine went then and the boat got skunked) but when the weather came back down it was unbelievable! The 40-80 pound BFT starting biting again, plus these #40-60 Yellowfin Tuna showed up out of no where at the same time and place. For 4 day's they were catching about 100 of these things per boat. (see why I was a little disappointed) I caught about the same amount of fish, but they were smaller!
Here's how the trip went.
I had my good fishing friend tall Glenn with me and a new friend Lauren. We left from Pierpoint landing in Long Beach for the 11 hour boat ride to get to the Cortez Bank. (the weather was perfect) We only had small sardines on the boat, so small hooks and light line was the way to go. I wanted to catch them on 40 or 50 pound test line, but the small bait made that impossible. All the boats started off in the same spot in the morning. (they have been finding the fish really fast) So I thought this was going to be a slam dunk!
Nope nobody found anything the first 2 hours of looking. So all the boats wandered off in different directions looking for the tuna. For the next 5 hours all's we caught was 15 Skipjack for the boat. We finally found some Dolphins and caught 1 Yellowfin Tuna. (apparently nobody else found anything yet) So Captain Ray kept chasing the Dolphins for just 1 or 2 tuna a drift. On the 4th try on the same Dolphin school we hit pay dirt. A bunch of them stuck with the boat for the next 4 hours. It was pretty easy to get bit in the Starboard corner. (you could see them swimming under the boat) I went with my #30 outfit with my flyliner ringed hooks.
I caught 4 in a row pretty easily, with them being an 20-25 pound average on the size of the fish. On my 5th tuna I hooked a little bigger one, it was closer to #30 and it fought quite a bit harder. I now caught my Mexican limit of Tuna which is 5, but we were in US waters so I could keep fishing. We were now starting to catch a few bigger ones, so I asked myself should I go to heavier line. Na!!! I got this far on #30 pound test so why change? I went back to hot corner and dropped a bait in and it was instantly hit. This fish emptied half my spool of line on it's first run. I wasn't in Kansas any more and I didn't just hook Toto!
I was on this fish for 45 minutes and it was a brute! When they gaffed this thing the diameter was amazing! It was a true butterball! The pictures didn't do it justice, I called it 50 pounds. It could have weighed bigger or smaller but it was nice one any way you look at it! After that fish I was done! I could have probably caught a couple more but I was done!
The fish count was funny because there really was 2 fish counts. One was for the paying passengers and one for the 7-8 of the best deadheads Pierpoint landing had to offer! I talked to the deadheads and they all caught 7-10 fish each. The paying passengers caught between 0-3 fish on average. Glenn caught 3 and my buddy Lauren caught 1. 976-Tuna reported 65 fish then changed it to 91 and on the boat the deckhand said they pulled 103 out of the fish hold. Captain Ray didn't want the paying passengers to feel bad or they were lied to on the fish counts. (but I knew the truth)
I told Glenn and Lauren we got super lucky! As we were drifting and catching fish, all the other boats were just driving around us not catching anything. The Freedom that day caught 4 Skippy's and 1 Yellowtail. But the next day the boats all abandoned that area and went back on the Bank and started catch those #40-80 BFT again! So it ain't over yet! I was hoping to take the Prom queen home, but I had to settle for one of the girls in her court! lol
