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       Sept 5th, 2018

 

 

 

  • Sept 5th, 2018

  • The day started in the dark. We were rolling through the bay when fog rolled in. Yikes! You better trust your radar in those situations. Luckily about  5 miles out the fog lifted as the sun began to rise.

     

    What a day! I got good intel from a person Gina works with. He gave me some numbers and sure enough we were able to find the fleet that was already on the fish. We were a little late as Roger and I stopped and picked up some decent mahi on the way out. 

     

    As we approached the fleet I could see that it was a bait/jig bite. Out of the 60 boats I think I saw only one guy up on the troll. There were thousands of tuna chicks picking away at the water. As soon as we stopped we hit the jackpot. Cow nose rays were under our boat. The water was so clean it was amazing what you were able to see. I started to scream at Roger to get a jig in the water. He didn't know that rays and yellowfin tuna hang out together.  I'm sure he thought that I was nuts. Roger dropped down a RonZ and had it ripped off the jig. I started to throw out live peanut bunker. Bingo! We had albies, skippies and yellowfin under our boat. We both grabbed our spinning setups that we use for mahi and pitched out a live bunker. Roger’s reel starts screaming. 10 minutes later it’s a damn albie. I was not happy. I was worried that we might have to go with lighter leader than the 40lb test that we were using.  Tuna have amazing eyesight. As I watch my bunker swim down I can see it gets inhaled. This time it was clearly a yellowfin. A few minutes later Roger sinks the gaff into our first yellow. We catch a few more skippies and yellowfin. Later in the morning Roger and I are hooked up at the same time with yellows. I'm able to get mine to the boat. I hand the rod to Roger and gaff it. Two minutes later Roger brings his fish to the boat.  Well, one of the reasons why you have two gaffs on the boat is because you may just lose one. As I try to gaff the fish the gaff gets ripped out of my hand. Roger's tuna then dove deep and stayed there for over a half hour. Keep in mind we are using light tackle. Finally with my other gaff we boat Roger's final fish of the day.

     

    If you guys remember I wrote an article in July of 2016 for On The Water magazine. The theme of the article was bringing inshore baits offshore. Those of us out there that had live bait out-fished those that only had jigs.  Don't leave home without live bait. All fish including the mahi were caught on live peanut bunker. 

     

    The first screen shot show the rays and the tuna that are just underneath them. 

     

    The second screen shot clearly shows tuna under the boat.

 

 

 

 

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