August 19th 2020

 

 What a great day. It was just Justin and I out there. Justin is only 16 so I didn't feel comfortable running at 2am in the ocean with just us. So, we pushed off at 5am and had an easy trip out to the tuna grounds. We were armed with mullet, snappers and peanut bunker. We pulled into a large fleet and within 5 minutes Justin was tight. The tuna blew up the snapper on the surface which was awesome to watch. Despite me doing a terrible job gaffing the fish we managed to put it on ice. After that things got slow. I decided to break from the fleet and with the help of my Fujinon binoculars I spotted 100's of tuna chicks. Once again Justin comes tight. We are fishing with 40 pound test. Our drag on the live bait reels is set to 13 pounds. So you can't "manhandle" the fish to the boat. After a 40 minute fight the braid broke! I felt so bad for Justin. I was shocked when he looked at me and said "oh well we will just have to hook up again."  I like fishing with people that are positive. As we are resetting the lines I look at the screen and start screaming "START JIGGING!!." Before Justin could grab his jigging rod I was already hooked up. Justin did a great job with the gaff. Once the fish hit the deck, Justin dropped his jig down and he was hooked up. A few minutes later Mr. Positive watched his fish come over the rail. After that we made a run south to another fleet. Once we rolled in we encountered 1000's of tuna chicks. Let's just say things got silly. The jig in that photo was brand new to start the day. We pulled the plug and made the non-eventful ride home.

 

To add to the awesome day we were visited by a huge whale shark. In the video you can see just how nice and blue the water was out there.