Headed out to Ensenada this past Saturday for my best fishing day ever :!: Which is not saying too much as this is only my 4th deep sea trip (2nd one this year and the one before that was about 2 years ago). Anyway, had a good feeling going on this trip as it was 777 and the boat was called "The Luckiest" (out of Juanto's dock). Chartered the 12 person boat, but only had 11 anglers going. Couldn't get the last spot filled, but hey more room and beer for me. :food: Went to bed at midnight and woke up at 2:30am as I couldn't sleep because fishing time was approaching. :explode: We left my bro's house in SD at 4am and was at the dock at 5:30. We loaded up and left to get some live bait by 5:45. Soon after we were leaving the safety of the harbor and onto the open sea. We tossed out a couple of lines to troll while we cruised to a fishing spot. At about 7am, we start hooking up with squid. It was on! Never seen anything like it. We each landed one (or more) before we got tired of them and decided to look for some fish. Hit a school of bonito right out of the gate and started killing them. We ran out of live bait by 8:30 and was down to two trolling lures and two tuna jigs (don't know what they are called. Big piece of lead with treble at the end). So by this time we just fished two poles off the back and took turns after each catch. Most of the time we were getting double hookups, so it didn't take long before you were fishing again. Our slogan became "Save the lure!" and "yellowtail" as the deckhead would yell that out right before someone hooked up. While we were out there we found a boat that sold us 4 more lures, but we ended up losing those as well. We started cutting up squid wings into strips and use that as bait, which worked quite well. Our biggest problem was avoiding the squid. After the first go around we had enough, but it seems like they were following us. We would hook up on fish and then the next thing here comes the squids. Nice fight, but we had enough of them. The trip was supposed to be from 6am-3pm, but we called it quits around noon. The following two hours was spend watching the deckhand and skipper clean the fish as we drank, rested, or talked about what just happened. End count was 20 squid, 60+ bonito, 4 barracuda, and 1 yellowtail. I was hoping for more yellows, but by the time we found them we didn't have any lures left. :(

Having a few laughs before we leave


Me getting inked


Me not very happy about getting inked


Josh's first boat ride/fishing trip and he hooks up with a squid!


We filled up the fish box on the boat, so when we ran out of live bait, we used the bait tank as storage


Some bendo action





Joey with a bonito


Miller with the first barracuda


My cousin Charlie from NoCal with the only yellowtail


Dad and son enjoying some fishing time together


Some group shots (at least of the ones that were not resting)





The only thing I would have changed differently is that I would have brought my own gear (had one reel blow out on us, the lined sucked on the others. Probably why we lost all our lures) and brought more lures. I thought they would have lures on board so we didn't bring much, but they only had two. We're already talking about making this a yearly event, but getting a hotel room down there and making a whole weekend out of it. Too much rushing to get there and then get back. We had to buy some coolers for the trip home as we ran out of room in the ones we brought with us. I guess I can't complain too much about that. :wink: Wife can't wait until next year, so I might try to go next month. Anyone up for some Mexico fishing? :D