7/29 Yellows on the Kolo

[webmaster]

Tuna did not want to play today but the yellows dud - we landed 6 nice ones.



Long Story - Left Shelter Island Sunday evening with crew members Aaron, Sid and Nick. I had already assumed the bait at the receiver would be crap so we went into the kelp line with sabikis and made a few dozen spanish macks and smelts first. We then loaded up on sardines at the receiver. They were a little better shape than last week but still crap. Next stop was North Island were I put the squid light out and after a few moves we found the bed and proceeded to crowd a healthy scoop into the small tank. Loaded for bear, we motored out to the tuna pens arriving just after 2am. After a few hours sleep, we woke to find a few cattle and private boats that had joined us. We gave it a go for a couple of hours and didn't see any action the whole time. Some of the cattle boats were moving on and I decided to do the same. We put out the trollers and worked south east in search of paddys. It took a while but we found a small one and I hook a nice mahi on it. I pass the rod to Nick and after a long battle it chews through the line right next to the boat. Nick has a nice video, maybe he will post it? Next paddy was a bit larger and loaded with fork. We decked four nice ones and lost many more, mostly by me I'll admit! Just wasn't my day. Paddys were scarce so after a few hours we came back to the same one but it was still vacant so we went back to the pens. All the cattle boats were gone but there were 6 or 8 private boaters working it. We drifted for a few hours and I saw one #50 tuna caught between everybody there. We decided to troll towards home and look for kelps. We didn't get anything on the troll but found a few more paddys and picked away at the yellows, putting a total of 6 on the boat. Sid and Nick are saltwater newbs and Aaron only fished S/W in Hawaii so these were there first yellowtail. Good job guys, hopefully next time we'll get some tuna.

[DockRat]

Another totally awesome report Jeff.
DR

[Tunaslam]

Healthy looking Tails Jeff, fine job! Bummer on no Tuna, especially with nice weather. Tuna don't seem to be hanging with the pens like the last couple of years, except earlier this year when they first appeared?

[calcutta and butts]

Some nice size yellows

[webmaster]

Healthy looking Tails Jeff, fine job! Bummer on no Tuna, especially with nice weather. Tuna don't seem to be hanging with the pens like the last couple of years, except earlier this year when they first appeared?

Agree, most of the "meat" is at 80+ miles - too far for the Kolo

[skildfisher]

Excellent report Jeff. It was a great day on the water thanks for the good times and memories. Bummer on the lost dodo, at the hookset the initial jump and bluish flashes were pretty exciting to see.

It was fun. We all caught our very first yellows. They're tough fish! Couldn't imagine how these BFT would pull! I landed my 2 yellows on a Dobyns 867 swimbait rod matched to a Calcutta 401 D spooled with 200yds of 50lb powerpro and a 4 foot 40lb fluorocarbon leader connected by an FG knot to a gamakatsu 4/0 circle hook. The FG is a Super strong Braid to fluorocarbon connection I tied on our rigs that held up on all our fish and my friends biggest yellow thankfully.

dorado vid if you pay close attention you can make it out. Got it close a couple times but just didnt finish it off. I have another longer better quality 6 minute video of a yellow fight to gaff ill post later
http://youtu.be/-3QzxjPWhI0

Below are the first landed yellows of the day after the lost dodo on the first paddy


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