# Offshore Trolling Report 5/30 "FINAL APPROVAL"



## PELAGIC PIRATE (Oct 10, 2007)

Cleared the pass friday night around 11pm friday night to really sloppy seas that seemed to be coming from every direction. The plan was to run to the squiggles and get a few hours sleep, but with the seas being so bad we could only make 10knts. We arrived at the spot around 5:30 with lines in by 6 am .We had planned on trolling from the squiggles to the spur but the seas were way off from the report, and being so bad we opted to troll down sea to some blue water hanging over the wings on our roff report. I fell asleep after throwing up two huge piles of BBQ i ate the day before, just after baits in , and my other buddy was sleeping too leaving reggie to man the helm and clear the scattered grass. He was rewarded for his efforts by a huge bite at around 7:30 am.

I woke up to the singing reel screaming and jumped up to help clear the other lines. I thought it was a small billfish we i saw a glimpse of it thrashing on the surface but 25 minutes later it came up to the port side and the huge telephone size wahoo sowed itself for the first time. Then we almost lost it as i went to leader the fish it swam 90 mph right into the props. Some how Reggie was able to jump on his belly over the stern between the motors of our 27 ft Cat and somehow still have the fish on but under the boat near the bow. Several tense minutes later we had the monster boat side were i leadered and gaffed the almost 6ft long Hoo which weighted in at 80 pounds a day later. 

We stuffed the monster into the box after several pictures and got the spread out again. We trolling 15 minutes and Bam ! fish on which turned out to be a nice 40 pound hoo for me. So now we are 2 for 2 and lines out again, and again we get bit almost instantly. This time a small dolphin. Lines out again and 10 minutes later we are on again with another 40 pound class wahoo in the boat. we popped everything out again and had one more fish in the spread , this time a small billfish of some sort came up and ate the long right rigger ballyhoo islander combo twice but didn't stick. We circled the area for an hour only to find nothing , but we did notice some big bird schools way off to the east so we pulled everything in and headed that way.

We get over near the birds and i notice some fish boiling under some of them so we toss out the poppers and its wide open Dolphin time. Nothing really big but limits for 3 guys of 5 to 7 pound fish none the less. After that we decided to head toward the Johnny Walker ridge to bottom fish as the seas sucked and we were tired of trolling in the slop. We bottomed fished in and around the the area and caught scamp , Gag, Amberjacks and trigger fish. We started to head back toward home around 4 pm and ran into more bird schools covered in medium to peanut size dolphin, and even saw one monster that swam by uninterested . I thought i would drop a butterfly jig below the school and first drop down i hooked and caught a nice 25 pound Blackfin Tuna to add to the already full box. We rounded out our limit of huge Jack with butterfly jigs on a nice scratch i ran over a few minutes later and called it a day. 

The ride home absolutely sucked beyond belief and took close to two hours at 22 knots. I cant believe how bad the seas were , with no interval and coming from all directions, it was like being in a washing machine. We got back to the dock at 8:15 , with enough time to clean one gag and run it up for Hook and Cook at pier 77 to go. Passed out and slept 12 straight hours, so i guess you could say we were really tired from the sea beating we took for 22 hours. I will say that this should be a great dolphin season because we must have saw million dolphin fish under 20 or so different bird flocks we saw from 400 ft to 120 feet, they were literally everywhere we went.




Pictures to follow guy's.


----------



## Liquid Medication (Jun 2, 2008)

great job guys! cant wait to see the pics!


----------



## slappydave (Oct 15, 2007)

It doesn't look that rough out there.



Nice fish, Phelps.


----------



## Magic236 (Oct 1, 2007)

Congrats on a great trip and thx for the post.When do you plan togo for BBQ?


----------



## Travis Gill (Oct 6, 2007)

Real rough lol it looks nice


----------



## NaClH2O (Feb 14, 2008)

Thats a beast. Nice job!


----------



## PELAGIC PIRATE (Oct 10, 2007)

> *Freespool (6/1/2009)*Real rough lol it looks nice


It is funny how the photos never show just how bad the seas were, but trust me it sucked out there unless you were in 45 ft sportfisher. The ocean seemed to calm down from about 11:30 am to about 1:30 pm , and then it went back to windy and confused seas. Also consider that we were in a 27ft cat , which isnt the biggest boat beam wise which doesn't help when its confused. I will say that there was zero interval between the swells, and the seas seemed to be coming from every direction which made trolling miserable. I can also tell you my whole body is sore from being tossed and banged around for 22 hours straight hours including the crappy 2 hour ride back to the pass from the last spot. The ocean beat us every single mile in all the way till inside the pass..Man it felt great to hit that pass !


----------



## recess (Oct 8, 2007)

Thats a stud right there great fish guys, and yes it was a washing machine out there for sure, very little time between waves.

TIM


----------



## Bill Me (Oct 5, 2007)

Nice hoos:bowdown

We got beat to death in the same seas Thur. PM


----------



## GONU (Oct 3, 2007)

Those are some nice looking Hooters.:bowdown need more:takephoto


----------

