Along for the ride were Mike Najar, John Benache and Tim. We left the Dana Pt break wall with a nice supply of sardines with high hopes of finding the yellowfin that have been flooding the South Coast over the last few weeks. We headed for an area west of the 209 looking for the mammals. There were a few boats in the area looking as well and everyone was sharing info and helping each other out on the channel we were monitoring (19). We stopped on a couple of nice paddy’s along the way for nada so we kept on trudging along in beautiful conditions. Once you hit the GPS numbers it’s pretty much a crap shoot as far as where you go from there. We decided to head northwest and it paid off as some friends of mine who were off San Clemente came into radio contact and called us into an area of kelps that were holding dorado. As we were heading to the numbers they gave us we found a group of 3 nice paddy’s that were holding some nice dodo’s. First baits in the water and it was game on for John and Mike. Nice bulls that won their freedom due to, well let’s say there probably pitching hay or feeding the hogs right now?. We moved over to one of the other paddy’s and bam. Game on for Tim and I. These fish stuck and we were on the board. Here I am with a couple of shots of a nice dodo that went 19 lbs on the digital:
Dodo #2 for Tim:
Our buddies came by in there beautiful 26’ Davis, and they were completely out of bait so we shared a few net full’s with them:
Went back to the paddy and John (Mr. Hotstick) pulled this nice 18 lb. yellow off one of the kelps:
It was somewhere around 11a-12pm that the radio chatter was hot and heavy with word that some boats found the porpoise and the yellowfin were starting to bite back out towards the 33.05/118.00 line. We decided to give up on the kelps and chase the tuna. And chase we did. I have never run so many miles and covered so little ground. It was insane but I have to admit it seemed like everyone was getting along for the most part as there were 50 or so boats spread out over several pods of porpoise. It was run and gun with boats of all sizes including the Fury and Dana Pride. Every boat seemed to at least be hooked at some time or another and once you had your fish in it was pretty easy to see where the porpoise were as the fastest moving boats were the ones that were on them. We landed up with 4 tuna for the day. Or should I say John landed up with 4 tuna. He caught 2 on the sardines and 2 on plastics. Here he is with his rubber caught tuna with “neener neener neener” tongue sticking out because I told him he wouldn’t catch a yellowfin on the plastics:
We ended up close to the 277 with the fleet so it seems that the fish are definitely moving northwest. The run in was sloppy with following seas hitting us on the port side. Thanks to my auto pilot, I was still able to catch a quick nap on the way in as I was exhausted from zero hours of sleep. If I had a chance to do this over again I would try trolling some rapalas through the fast moving schools of mammals. And if that didn’t work I would probably try and move away from the fleet, which we actually did, and find our own pods of mammals. Don’t get me wrong, the fish were hungry but we should have been doing more catching and less chasing. I can only imagine what those tuna are thinking with all those boats zig zagging back and forth above them. Shoulda, coulda, woulda aside this was a fun trip with a cool group of guys who love classic rock and heavy metal like I do while making sure we all had a cold one in hand at all times. Can’t wait to give it another shot before the fish move on.
Dana Point 9-14-08-Chasing the tuna and a couple of dorado
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