Decided to take the day off and see if I could get in on some of the awesome barracuda bite that has been going on recently so I jumped on the Icon for its sleep in 3/4 day trip. Left the house about 6:45am this morning and got to the landing just a little after 7am. Surprisingly the morning traffic was pretty light. By about 7:45am we boarded the Icon with a huge load of 15 anglers. Today's crew would be Captain Morgan at the helm and I believe the deckhands were Shawn and Peter, and Mary cooking up some great food in the galley. Left the docks just a few minutes after 8am and we were off to get bait. Picked up some really great looking anchovies and some sardines and pointed the boat south.
Time to get some bait...
Reports were coming in from the morning fleet that the barracuda were biting and some boats already had limit's and it's barely 9am. We arrived to the area sometime after 10am and it was a bit of a parking lot. It was a mix load on different boats.
Some looked like light loads like us today or like the Native Sun.
Other like the Natilus looked almost full.
Once Captain Morgan got the boat positioned the jigs started flying out. No sooner we were hanging barracuda. It wasn't wide open but we did manage to get about 20 or so barracuda before the bite finally shutdown.
Here's Ruben, with his dad. It's his second time out on the salt and he got his first barracuda today. Way to go!
Spent the rest of the day on several different spots after the barracuda were gone and we were catching sand bass and calico's. Lots of shorts on the calicos but the sandies were coming up and over the rail in some really great sizes. Some were even really big grumpies.
We even got a sheephead. Wow where did that come from?????
Out Jackpot winner. It's the barracuda on the right.
We finally pulled anchor and we were back at the dock just a little before 5pm. Weather was great today. Flat calm ocean, it was almost like a lake out there. Overcast most of the day so you never really felt the hot blazing sun so it just made for a great day out on the water.
Lots of short calico's were caught and release and even some really nice size grumpies were relased to be caught another day. Lots of short halibuts were caught too and those were quickly released.
It's been a few years since I've been on the Icon, and the Captain and crew run a great boat. Captain Morgan, very friendly guy to talk to and just loves to joke around and make sure everyone is having a good time. As for the crew, all I can say is they are great. They were always on the ball getting the fish unhooked or out of tangles or when needing the gaff. Even Mary our galley cook would help with some of the deckhanding and talk about service, if you weren't in the galley when the food was ready she would bring it to you.
Most of the barracuda were caught on the iron with a few on live bait. The sandies and the calico's looked like they only wanted the anchovies mainly today. Very few bites on the sardine. Almost none caught on plastics as far as I knew of. It's Friday, had great weather, great food, some good fishing and an extremely light load. Can't complain at all.
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