I down at the dock on Tuesday to get a fuel filter part number from the Warrior and saw the rigger of light. Sea Wolf had a rigger of 20 White flags and heard the reports. The dock was sturing with everyone trying to get crews together for the epic opporunity to catch double digit white ones. Joe had mentioned he wanted to go this week. So call him and he says let's roll. We get a crew together and head out at 4:30 AM. Well 4:30 was to late to leave. Everyone was already starting to leave at 3:30AM. We head out ready to do battle and find an entire fleet of boats with the same idea.
On our run out in 50 fathoms we see birds working a bait abll and put lines in thinking we have found a honey hole only to find little baby tuna's eating stuff and our baits. Pick an run out to the fleet and lines in. We see boats hooking up around us as we put lines in and then things die off. Heard of most boats hooking up early on the 650 area in 50 to 80 fathoms. We troll around in digust as we do not see a fish for a couple of hours when Joe puts us on a weed line. I am thinking I am going to be rigging baits like crazy from dolphin, but there are none. Well with in 15 minutes we get a white on the left teaser and Mark hooks it up. Jeff jumps on the rod for his first white marlin. Back on the troll we have another come into the spread about 30 minutes later. Comes in on the left teaser and I put an eel in front of it and it takes the bait. Drop back and when I go to lock it up I see it on the same side of the boat windshield wiping. I reel the bait in hoping to get it to come tight with the circle hook, but threw the hook as if to laugh at me. It comes back in on the eel and completely misses it never to be seen again. We then catch a couple dolphin here and there and pull of the line. Oh well. Troll around for hours with no bites.
I have been trying a couple different things to change our spread and throw out a naked mackeral I rigged on a 50 out of the chair. Joe (Owner) comes down and asks me as I am watching it swim likes it is alive, "You have a woody right now, don't you"? I said yes! He said, "Get back to watching the whole spread, now". He walks up to the bridge and sure enough with in 5 minutes a white shows up right behind the mackeral and does not want to come off it. We ave a bait ready and take it away. It goes for the Sea Star behind it down the middle up on the bridge and starts running with it. Someone tries a series hook set and pulls the hook. DAM!
Never saw another and worked our way home and went by a high flyer and got covered up wiht gaffers, yep gaffers. Get them in and another pass comes a 35# Gaffer and a 25# gaffer. Then we head for the barn. Get back at 7:30 PM. Man I am beat.
We thought we had had a bad day, but got back to the dock to see singles a double and the overnighter boats had 6 to 10 which most were caught the night before.