As per the forecast, last Saturday conditions were excellent, and after the
last outing 3 weeks ago, where we had miserable seas and relatively poor fishing, I was eager to give it a go. With winter in full swing here and water temps around 22-23o C, my mind was focused on getting some
... been a long time since we had them.
So the crew was assembled. A short one it was: just myself and my brother Junior. My son has been recovering from a bad flu so he stayed home this time.
Word around the campfire was that fishing was poor, and only bottoms were biting. With the full moon and spring time on Friday, our plan was to combine various techniques and see what we could come up with.
Sunrise is around 06:30 these days so we arranged to be at the Club at 06:00. Finalize all the tackle and be in the water at 06:30 more or less. We got into the water just before 07:00. Water temp was 19.4o C and the bay was flat. The temp went as much as 23 o C and that was it.
We gunned the boat and decided to go straight to Poco and see if the could get some YFT. The cross of the shallows at Cockburn slowed us down as the outgoing tide and oceanic swell from Friday's wind made for some unconfortable conditions.
As soon as we went past 15 m, we put 2 lines in the water on the Makaira 50W II on bent butt rods. Due to the swell we couldn't go faster that 16-17 knots so we took the opportunity to target some
As we got to the southern tip of Poco, the startboard long rod screamed and out there we saw a
jump a few times. Yeah, nice surprise!!!! After a few minutes, the fish was released into the hatch and we switched to a 4 rod (30 Lb) setup.... 2 rappies (short), one mid (bird + squid daisy chain + seastar with strip bait) and a long one (bird + squid daisy chain + red/white cedar plug)...
Arrived at the tuna spot and
.... triple strike: rappie and the two long rods! Chaos aboard! We managed to catch all three (2 kawa kawa and 1 YFT) and not tangle the lines. Not big (around 3 kg) but hey fresh tuna is a fresh tuna!!! We worked the area, with only 3 rods and had a double strike. Lost the one fish but got another YFT. It then went quite. As low tide was at 11.20 we wanted to do a bit of bottom... we were about 9 nm from the grounds so off we went hi speed trolling to the couta grounds... no bites so we changed tactics...
