What's up fellow anglers?
I get hooked up with Jeff aka Webmaster from Commander Wingnut aka Arthur to launch from Dana Point by 4 AM.
I picked up my buddies Tim, Teddy and Joseph (who flew from Minnesota to LA to fish tuna for the first time) at 2 AM and off we go to Dana Point.
Met up with Jeff, loaded up and boarded the Kolomona. Off to the bait barge we went and got some nice sized sardines and mackerel.
Jeff said the tuna have been biting early morning before the sun rise. And the man knew what he was talking about. Because within minutes of getting to our destination, we soak our baits and WHAM! Double hook up. We were fighting these bad boys before the sun even came up.
As the fight ensues, Jeff says, "if you guys land these fish, its going to be an accomplishment."
He must have known how big they were from the fight they were giving off because they were kicking our asses! After tag teaming these badboys and what seemed to be a back breaking 10-15 minutes, we land these beautiful hogs. The first one was a BFT about 40lbs caught on fly line sardine. The second one was the Butterball YFT also on caught on fly line sardine .
The tuna bite slowed down once the sun came out so Jeff says lets go paddy hopping on our way to Catalina Island so we can troll for some Yellowtail.
On our way to Catalina, we came across some kelp paddies that produced some nice sized Dodos. Woohoo! Fishing and a acrobat show from these guys? Awesome!
So we gaff a couple of Dodos and throw them into the body bags and kept on looking for more paddies on the way to Catalina Island. Once we got to Catalina, we set up the Rapala lure and started trolling. We trolled the East end of the island hoping to land some Yellowtail.
At first we had no luck, then rods started bending and we're yelling "fish on!" However, the first couple of troll bites were kelp bass that we threw back. Then we started getting Yellowtail to bite our lures!
After slaying a couple of Yellowtails (and one skipjack), Jeff said lets go paddy hopping on our way back to Dana Point. As we leave Catalina Island, we come across a Hammer Head shark just chilling on the surface. We get in close and try to get some pictures (hopefully they came out well). On our way back, we hit a couple more paddies but with no luck.
Nevertheless, it was a nice cool day with calm water without any white crowns in sight. We slayed some fish, learned a lot of new things, made new friends and had a blast!
I wanna thank Jeff for a day of lifetime memories for me and my Tuna cherry popped buddies.
Here are the pictures from our trip.
First one of the day
The beast
MURDER
Thanks Jeff for cleaning our fish!