La Jolla 9/19 AM - Bonito
 

Launched around 530 - swell definitely picked up versus last few trips in August. Bait came easy, but even the greenbacks were small, no bigger than the jack mackerel or sardines.

Trolled out past the point for a while using a Carolina rig, something hit and ran hard with the line for 5 secs, but as soon as I engaged the lever line went slack.

~An hour later, same thing, but this time I managed to land it - didn't put up much of fight until he was at color, in fact had to pedal hard in addition to reeling just to keep the line tight.

The Mack’s have been perfect bait size. Nice how did you prepare it?

Cured in a soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic and scallion marinade for a few hours and ate most as sashimi same day, which was pretty good.

Left the excess in the marinade and tried to grill on day 2 ... it was edible, but not good.

Did you bleeding it, gut it and immediately bury it in ice? I've found that if I do that it can last a couple days and taste pretty good on the grill.

Yeah bled him immediately on the water and put on ice, didn’t gut him until I was home.

Problem might have been I had it off ice when preparing and eating for a few hours didn’t put back in the fridge until I realized I wasn’t going to finish it all.

Either that and/ or marinade was meant for sushi, not really an overnight and grill recipe.

Of course now that I've failed Outdoor Chef's Life does a video on how to do seared Bonito sashimi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZkVUaJUwGw

Looking forward to getting another one and doing it right!