*aztec*
I've been talking about this WSB charter on the Dreamer for quite some time now. We were supposed to leave on Friday and fish Saturday but on Friday around 2pm, Captian Allyn calls me up and said it's better to reschedule because he spent 2 days on the water prior to our trip and said he only caught three, 12 inch, calico's. He said in 47 years of fishing Cat island, he's never seen the fishing so bad... bummer.
I had my patch on and everything... oh well, i really appreciated the heads up - so i called up my crew of guys (including RxVenom and NickxLam from FNN) and we all decided to wait until the Ghosts start chewing again. This Dreamer report is on stand-by mode for now...
Well, i wasn't going to let this news bring me down so on a whim, i checked out Seaforth and the Aztec was scheduled to leave at 8pm - so i jumped at it.
Got to the landing around 7pm and was pleasantly surprised to find only 19 guys on the roster.
I met some real cool people that were also on the trip solo. JP, Bill and Paul nice to meet you guys - hope you're reading.
So we board up and plug the bait tanks with horse sardines and small/med sized macs. Go into the galley for the speech. Captian says he intends on searching for the YT's down at Todos Santos/San Tomas area (about 75 miles south). If we don't find em, we'll fish shallow water cod and the kelp for some bass.
Go to sleep.
Wake up in what would be the most beautiful fishing conditions ever.
The hills of Todos Santos just before sunrise. It was going to be a warm day - you could already tell.
When the sun breached the hills, we put some rapalas behind the boat and slow trolled for a while hoping to catch a Yellow.
Me and my friend JP - waiting patiently for a jig strike.
Unfortunately, after criss crossing Todos Santos for about an hour in the morning - the water was still too cold for YT's (57 degrees) - so we made a short move and fished around for about 2 hours.
I rigged up with a double dropper loop with sardine on bottom and strip squid on top pretty much the whole day. We fished anywhere from 60-250 feet all day so not too much lead was needed.
My first fish of the day was a small lingcod on the sardine. The whole boat today caught at least 2 - 3 lings. Nothing really big - 22 to 28 inchers. But they were EVERYWHERE!!! Most of the time, we'd bring a ling over the rail and then send him right back down. Fun to pull on... but they just weren't big enough to keep.
A few minutes later, i managed to pull up my very first Cabby.
Then another Ling...
And of course the little steamer sized rockfish that pick away at the squid strips were inevetable...
After about 2 hours in the morning of getting the line wet, i worked up an appetite and Chef John made me French toast, garlic potatos and bacon... Something about that sweet smell of log cabin syrup mixed with frying bacon fat that makes me weak in the knees.
While i'm eating, i see JP's rod BENT OVER. He finesses the fish to the top and up came a really nice sized Ding a Ling.
Good job Bro!!
A few minutes go by and we found ourselves in the kelp. I tried fishing a fly line sardine for a while with no action. So i went back to the dropper loop, hoping to catch a fat calico... peck peck peck SLAM!!! It was pumping and turning its head like a heavy white fish...
a few tugs and cranks later - up came a nice male goat. I didn't know it at the time but i just caught the Jackpot.
We then made about an hour move more south to San Tomas for some deeper codding. We were now required to put on an 8-10 oz sinker. We went for the reds and that's what we found...
We all got our fill of reds and more lings - so we moved a little closer inside, towards the beach which allowed us to catch a whole bunch of other fish.
Here's Paul and a nice sized Chuckle Head.
One of my few white fish.
I didn't wanna catch TOO many white fish so instead of squid i put on a double sardine. As SOON as it hit bottom i felt my bait get attacked. It startled me so i quickly set the hook and found this...
interesting... so i drop a new sardine on the same spot and sure enough, as soon as it hit bottom, i felt it - whatever it was, had hooked itself on the hook. I'm slow grinding it up from the depths -
My first Pinback Shark! Cute little fella. Back into the drink for you buddy.
I skipped lunch because it was so much fun catching and watching the crazy variety of fish we were catching.
a few hours later, the cap says we're gonna go back to Todos Santos and see if we can get a YellowTail. So we head back again. By this time, everyone was pretty satisfied w/the trip so far. The weather was simply perfect. The conditions... perfect. It was one of those days where you didn't even need to fish to have a good time - the setting alone would have made it an enjoyable day.
The only thing that could make this trip the best day ever was... of course if i caught a YT. So when the boat stopped, the deckhands were chumming and... BOIL!!! BOIL!!!
I couldn't get my Salas 6X on FAST ENOUGH... my hands were doing something other than what my mind said to do - I hucked out the Salas yo yo and winded like a machine. Myself and 2 deckhands were throwing jigs for about 20 minutes with no luck. I can honestly say though, that i tried my best. As a by-catch, some fat rockfish bit my jig though...
i don't have to tell you what that feels like when something hits your yo yo jig - i thought i had it twice.
Well, it was starting to get late -
Some guys opted to fish through the night...
A guy on the port side pulled up this BULL Calico - doesn't look like much here but we put it on the digital scale. 7 pounds 1 oz.
I didn't fish after sun down - i was exhausted from jigging. Chef John hooks it up again... Crusted Pork chop, smashed potatos w/dijon mustard, bbq beans and steamed carrots.
After dinner, i passed out. I was sure JP's Lingcod won him the Jackpot but Paul (who was up all night watching them filet) goes - HEY KEV you're Sheephead took the pot!!!
That's when i realized that Lingcod lose a SUBSTANTIAL amount of weight in the fish hold. Goats - luckily stay solid.
This trip was a total spur of the moment thing. I'm glad i went on it though - i added 2 new fish to my portfolio (cabezon and pinback).
In total: i caught 12 species
sheephead
cabezon
lingcod (5)
red (4)
whitefish (3)
chuck (5)
copper (3)
Bocaccio
Treefish (2)
Pinback
Barberpole (2)
Johnny bass
Good trip.
kk
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Originally Posted by Ambassadorhawg
