9-6-2014 Native Sun 3/4 boat out of 22nd street landing

**FrankyG** · 09-08-2014, 03:13 PM

I got invited by my brother to go out on the Native sun out of 22nd street landing on 9-6-2014 it's a nice boat with a great captain and crew. The company my brother works for chartered the boat for saturday, for some reason the company he works for (phillips steel company) couldnt fill the boat up with enough spots so they asked the worker to invite a couple of friends and family so he asked my bro in law and me the night before if we wanted to go fishing for free with all the beer you can drink, at first me and my bro in law thought it was too good to be true but we still agreed to go. My brother got my nephew, bro in law, his buddy and me all on. It was a bad *** charter, all you can drink beer like he said, soda, candy, chips, free food and free fish cleaning. the crew worked hard to find us a kelp paddy and signs of life, the captain worked hard also he was constantly looking for kelp with his binoculars than hoping back in the wheel house to drive the boat. we got to the landing around 530am, we finally boarded the boat at 630am and we were off to get bait. we stopped at san pedro bait barge and they had some of the nicest 3-4 inch sardines ive seen in a long time perfect size, we loaded up two bait tanks with sardines and 1 tank with chovies for chum (some of the dines rolled over because of the warm water tempurature). once we left the harbor and started to make our way the captain comes on the speaker and tell us we're going offshore and i got all excited because the day before they had 110 yellowfin boated. we started to make our way offshore but the swells were acting up and the captain gets on the speaker again and says he didnt want to head south and come back home against the swells it would be a very choppy ride so he opted for catalina and i was a little bummed but what can you do when its free all i could hope for is a yellowtail or maybe some calicos and barricudas on the iron which is always fun. as we made our way to catalina we were approaching the east end and the captain gets on the speaker again and says ok guys heres the plan im going to go west for a few miles and see if we can find a kelp or signs of life because i want you guys to pull on some real fish, he said the tuna might be in our own back yard and we dont even know it but if we dont find any kelp or signs of life we're going to head straight to the island to put something in our bags. so he made his way south west and we saw a private boat on a nice size kelp so the captian keeps going in that direction and we see a stringer kelp and stop we metered fish but they would not bite so we reeled up the rods and kept looking finally the captain says i see either a monster kelp with birds on it or its just sitting birds but we're going to try it, it was another 2 more miles out and he said hes going to risk it, we were already passed how far he wanted to go off catalina in the first place. right when we got closer we see its a monster kelp with birds on it and as soon and we pull up boils everywhere and free swimming yellowtail everywhere. we put 15 yellowtail on the boat and 1 dorado real quick than we start to see some black torpedo figures dashing thru the water and around the boat and bam first yellowfin hits the boat. now its just a yellowfin bite as we drifted away from the kelp. we had tuna boiling all around the boat but they only would want the best sardine you could get in the bait tank, it had to be a super healthy dine with no red what so ever on it or they wouldnt touch it, i had tuna come up following my bait and i could see them look right at it and just turn away, i never seen tuna so picky with live bait like that. we had 24 people on board and we managed to put 15 yellowtail, 48 yellowfin and 1 dorado on board, not bad for a 3/4 day and a bunch of rental roders. my brother, his buddy, my bro in law and my nephew all landed a yellowfin each it was bad *** to see them fighting their first tuna ever. i managed to land 1 yellowtail and 5 yellowfin before we had to go home. we only got a couple of hours of fishing time because of traveling and we had to make it at the dock on time but the captain stayed out a whole extra hour at the end when the nicer grade showed up. all in all it was a successful trip and one i will never forgot!