On Friday, we headed out of OC to the Parking Lot to do some bluefin trolling. We beat our way south for 2 hours in a head sea and put the lines in a couple miles short. Not long after the spread is out, I see a little dolphin jump over one of the baits. 10 seconds later he was on. He liked jumping over that bait so much he did it a couple more times on the way in! We boxed him, and while I was untangling 2 of the lines, I felt one of the lines I was working on shake and pull. That one was a 10 lb dolphin! I'm just glad it wasn't a tuna or I might have lost some fingers. Once the spread was back out, the rod with the Crystal Ilander and big ballyhoo goes off, but pops back up. We had a break in the main line. That was one was likely to be a nice tuna. A few minutes later, the long rigger goes off. Dylan, our angler, took 2 steps toward the rod then runs to the other rail to puke his guts out. The back up angler was in the tower and the fish was gone about 2 seconds after he picked up the rod. That fish wasn't a tuna and didn't feel like a dolphin. We had just seen some cownose rays so I was thinking it might have been a cobia. A few minutes later another boat in the area reported catching a cobia. We started heading towards Lumpy Bottom. About the time we started getting bored, the long riger went off again. This time we had on our bluefin. Dylan was still sick, but he rallied to wind in his first tuna ever. After a tough 25 min fight we decked a 52" BFT. After that we headed to a couple lumps near the 40 fathom line to look for yellowfin. There were some flying fish and a sunfish, but no more action for the day. The tuna weighed in at 81lbs. All in all, not a bad day on the water!
Bill