After reading all the reports of yellowfin on the 209 we had to give it shot ourselves. Along for the ride were Mike, Ray Cid and my uncle Jerry De La Paz. We left the Dana Point launch ramp at 5:45am just before the party boats were about to load up with bait. Plan was to fish the 209 and 181. I took an inside route to the 209 knowing that boat after boat probably made the straight run to the high spot. A few miles before hitting the area of the 209 we found a nice paddy and it was game on. Dorado were everywhere and I managed to pull in this nice bull:
Mike hooked the mate which was about the same size as the bull:
Ray with his dodo:
We picked away at some of the smaller doraditos and just as we were about to leave and look for greener pastures Jerry hooks up to something a little bit bigger than a dorado:
We left the paddy and headed for the 209. It looked like the Huntington Flats during the sand bass run. There were boats spread out everywhere. Some were stopped on paddies, some were trolling and others were just looking. I called out for a fish report and “Fish Taco” came back with some numbers to a nice paddy. When we got there we saw only one fish boil and we had no hits. Spoke with Fish Taco and they had enough of the 209 so we decided to buddy boat SW looking for the porpoise. We stopped on a couple of paddies and trolled past the 181 and the 182 for nada. We were just SW of the 43 in beautiful conditions when I spotted the porpoise a couple of miles away. I just love being up in the tower.
Called out to Fish Taco and we both arrived and it was instant hookups on some nice 22-40 lb yellowfin. For our group fluorocarbon leader was the hot ticket. I was fishing with 40 lb mono and the same line test flouro leader (18 inches) and I was able to go 4 for 5 on these hard pulling fish:
Ray with one of his 3 tuna:
Hotstick Jerry with one of his 5 tuna:
Mike and Jerry:
One of our several triple hookups for the day:
Our new friends on the “Fish Taco” were on the fish and between the two of us we were able to stay with the at times fast moving pod of porpoise:
The trick to fishing the mammals is to come up on them slowly and start metering. The porpoise do not register on the fish finder but the tuna show up as distinctive red marks. Keep moving through the porpoise until you see a few red marks and quickly go to neutral or just stop the boat altogether and toss a bait, fly lined or with a small weight both worked, and get ready. If there are no red marks I would still give it a shot but if you don’t hookup right away find another pod. The fish are there and spread out over a wide area and now is the time to get out there. It doesn’t get much better than this in our own backyard so go now!
150 miles and 90 gallons is what it took to pretty much fill up the “It’s 4 Reels! with tuna and dorado. Good times with good people made for an awesome day on Lake Pacifico.
Great report Man looking forward to more of them you rock.
GET YOUR FISH CUT
Linear Mode
