Let me begin with a huge thanks to jack(jdoghunts) for inviting my son and I out on his new 24' Hydra Sports w/a. It is a beautiful boat jack.

We left owls creek around 530ish and decided to head a bit further south due to some temp breaks on the charts jack dug up online. Despite the heavy early morning fog on the ride out, the water was beautiful and calm. We ran out to around 180' of water somewhere just outside the fingers and set out a 6 line spread consisting of a spreader bar, a get reel b/w mini bar, and an assortment of witch's and artificials in every color under the rainbox getting a beautiful 7 line spread behind a "small" boat. It didn't take long before we had our first YFT on the chart/green spreader bar. Being his first tuna voyage on the new boat, I gladly called over and handed the rod to the proud new capt. Jack had a good fight for a couple minutes before he learned a valuable lesson. Don't spend lots of money on boats, rods and reels and get cheap on your hooks. Fish gone and the walmart 7/0 mustad hook straightened out like a sewing needle.

Lines reset and we continued on. A good while gone by with nothing. Added a rainbow color squid daisy chain as a teaser directly off the transom. No hoo but was rigged with a hook on the last squid just in case. Only a few minutes gone by and line starts running off that chain. Never hooked up though.

Continued working south/southwest into about 600 feet of water or so reaching temps of approx 79 deg. with 1 other knock down that never came tight. Decided to head back in toward the area where we first began. As we reached the area, I took notice of a distinctive line in the water between the smooth lake like conditions and water with a little more ripple to the surface that ran as far as we could see. Decided to give it a shot. At approx. 100 we Crossed the line and within a minute had two lines go down. The first on the same green spreader as this mornings hook-up. Didn't last but a minute and he snapped the leader line to the baited hook.(lesson learned, never rely on mfg. knots and crimps) The second fish was on a small Penn Sen 4/0 with 30lb mono. My 12 year old son was on this one and little did he know preparing for the fight of his life. Hooked him up to my harness and let me games begin. To make a very long and drawn out story short, he surfaced this fish more than a dozen times, fought the fish for over an hour and after several missed gaffing attempts, finally lost the fish at the boat. Heart breaking for a 12 year old with his first YFT . Fish was a good 50-60lbs. (3rd lesson learned for our new capt. gaffing is not easy)

Got things back together and reset lines once again. Trolled for about another half hour or so and then made the decision that it was time to head in.

We may not have gotten any fish into the box but everyone learned a lesson or two and my son had his first real offshore fight.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x153/ke...ightingtuna.jpg
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x153/ke.../devinstuna.jpg

A great day

Thanks again Jack

Hey Keith,
Looks like Capt Eddie got you trained up pretty good as a mate. Too bad the big one got away. Better luck next time.

James

Nice Pics! Sorry the big one got away.

Sorry no fish Keith!! Nice underwater shot. Those mustads from Walmart look like the other Mustads, but are a lighter guage of metal. Get the 7691 Southern Tuna style from Mustad or the 7731 Mustad...heavier metal and welded eyes.

Heading to BassPro after work,looking for those heavyer hooks, will breakdown and buy some florocarbon too, thinking we should get more strikes with floro.

LIVE AND LEARN