I took the Stealth Crew out for a weekday tuna trip out of San Diego on Tuesday. We Launched out of SI at 5:30 and made our way to the 182. We stopped on a number of paddies for nothing.
We made it to the 182 and immediately saw a few boats working the porpoise. We got in front of the pod and began a slow troll and I immediately got picked up. Shut the engine down and we had an instant quad going. We boated all four fish and took off to get in front of the pod again.
This went on for most of the morning with quads and triples going on a regular basis. We proceeded to fill the boat with 18 quality grade YFT. We caught another 5 fish, but we simply ran out of room and they had to be released. My kill box was full with the first four fish and to keep the deck free of clutter we had to put the remaining 14 fish down in my cuddy. My boat is a bloody mess inside and out.
We were down to 8 baits left in the tank so we made two more attempts at them. Keep in mind the boat traffic by now was relentless. We jetted up well ahead of the pod and prayed they would stay their course and not get ran over and cut off by a few of the clueless tuna chasers out there including a jet skier. As luck would have it we were positioned perfectly and as soon as the porpoise went by our stern 3 of us were picked up. For whatever reason Dave was the only one not picked up and the look on his face was priceless. He looked like a kid in a candy store with no money. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. Oh well, at least we had someone free to help direct traffic.
We released those fish and down to our final baits we tried one more time where I was lucky enough to hang the last fish of the day. Sent the happy tuna on its way and made our way back to the dock.
It was a great day on the water for sure! By the way, I included a few photos in hopes that I might actually make the front page of Get Bent for the first time.
PS: You'll notice a busted gaff in one of the photos, but thankfully I had two gaffs on the boat or things would have got real interesting.
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