Tuna???

[October]

Ok heres my report.

here was my boats count:
20 Yellowtail, 3 Dorado, 17 Skipjack Tuna, 131 Yellowfin Tuna

2.5 hour drive out. Hopped around patties, trolled some schools and went looking for birds. The crew knows what they are doing for sure. The anglers, not so much. I would say about half the guys knew how to handle themselves but the other half may have never seen a fishing pole. I hooked into 6 and lost 3. 2 of those three were because of tangles. When the captain says to walk with your baits, DO IT! People were at the back of the boat with their fly lined bait all the way underneath and towards the front! it was mayhem.

I caught them on a mint Tady AA, chucking it out as far as I could, letting it sink 10 seconds and then fast retrieve. Also caught two on the Coltsniper with assist hook but the last one I knew my knot was funky (but ignored it because it was a fast, hot bite) and my fish broke off while the guy tried gaffing it. Thats another thing, the crew needs to get a little better at gaffing. They did a good job all around (I wouldnt want to deal with a bunch of ding dongs) but some of them really sucked at gaffing. I also got one of the trolling fish and then hooked into 2 with live bait. Wish i would have stuck to live bait more because that was the producer today for sure. Sardines.

I was using 25lb flouro and 30lb mono on my rigs. Dont need much more than that as most the fish were in the 15lb range with a few 40lbers and the dodos. Trip was fun, wish I was more aggressive out there though, you kinda gotta throw elbows to make sure you dont loose a fish. People literally go full tard for some reason.

p.s. I thought I was paying to go on a limited load boat. 51 anglers on a 60 person boat? The last few months they have been doing 40 anglers but now i guess "limited" means 9 less people... And even though the printout they give you says 5$ per tuna to clean, they charged six. kinda odd. I guess they are trying to squeeze every dime out of this awesome fishing right now. I didnt mind too much though because they definitely put us on fish and knew when to leave dead spots.

If I were to go again tomorrow I would stick to my 8+ foot rod, have a 6 foot flouro leader of 30lb and just chuck fly lined dines over everybody else, way out there.

EDIT: oh and all the YT were like 3lbs. We looked down after the trolling rod got hit and, I kid you not, there was a school of like 200 of them. As soon as bait hit the water you got hooked up. I released them (my first yellow tails!) because they were rats but a lot of people kept them. Saw some big ones in the schools but the captain decided it wasnt worth it so we moved off that school.