September 12th, 2008
I want to start by thanking Greg Garland for the 2 ILander lures he brought us. He had read on one of my postings that I had lost Justin's most productive lure on a fish pot, so he decided to replace it. Thanks Greg, we will use them often..... This may be the last report for ocean fishing for this year since nothing else is in the schedule and I'm trying to decide when to bring the boat around into the Chesapeake. Greg Garland and crew fished with us on Friday and as always they were a fun crew. We did a lot of catching and some fishing, that is to say we didn't find yellowfin tuna which is what everybody is looking for. What we did find was Dolphin, Wahoo, White Marlin, and a few small blackfin tuna. Washington Canyon was my favorite place this year and it didn't disappoint again. We started out catching a nice gaffer dolphin soon after putting out the spread. I think Vic brought that in followed by a nice Wahoo. Greg was in the chair at the time and brought it in quick so it didn't have a chance to bite through the leader. I kept working the area and we ran into some white marlin. I think it was two different ones because we fought one for a short time and it broke off. We soon had another in the spread. It hit a bait but only briefly hooked up. I was watching the spread and saw one race across from the starboard outrigger and hit a naked ballyhoo just aft of the stripteaser. It happened so quickly I was the only one to see it. Things slowed down for awhile and we came upon some pots and started working them. we trolled up a few, so we decided to bail some and get some more in the boat. We bailed about 25 nice ones and decided to go to the rockpile hoping tuna would be there. We trolled up a few gaffers and about 4 small blackfins, by then it was time to head home. I did see a lot of dolphin hanging around the pots so I made note of it. Thanks Nick, for all the company and help up on the helm. We had fun watching the fuel gauge plunge. Yes that's right! Sometime that morning one of us (Justin or me) accidentally hit the tank selector lever and we burned the fuel out of one of the tanks. Luckily one engine kept running and we brought it back on one screw. The next morning after the engines had cooled down I was able to purge the air out of the lines and she started right up. No harm done, thank goodness. Also I told my neighbor about the fish I saw at the rockpile and he went the next day and was back by 1:30 limited out, with a very happy charter. We hope to get a few more trips in before October, but if we don't we'll see you all at the shows this winter.
Capt Ken
- Capt. Ken
August 23rd, 2008
This Saturday we took out Ron Beck and Friends. Things looked good at the Washington Canyon so we headed there leaving a little before 5 am. We noticed on the way out that most boats were headed in the direction of the Hot Dog, Poorman's Canyon area, and in a way were glad. It meant not a lot of boats to compete for the fish in the area we were headed. On the other hand, we could have been making the wrong decision and going to a poor fishing area. I have learned not to second guess and wanted to revisit this area because it has been a good producer over the years. It is a longer run and burns more fuel, but if you get in the fish it pays. We started working the west wall at the 50 fathom line. We marked a little bait, but nothing to really get excited about. After trolling around some pots and not getting any hits, Justin came up and we started visually checking to see if anything was hanging ten to fifteen down. We saw a lot of dolphin under the double pots. so we pulled the heavy tackle and brought out the light. Immediately we boated three nice dolphin they were between 8 to 10 lbs. we did this for about an hour and 45 min and boated 24. The day was still young and we wanted tuna or marlin, sot we started trolling again. We worked several hours along the 50 fathom right on the edge where the green and blue seemed to be mixing. We found an area that held bait, but we couldn't find the big fish. We trolled by a pot and boated a nice gaffer dolphin about 20 pounds, so I gave Ron the choice of continuing to troll or going back to light tackle. They overwhelmingly said lets bail. The last hour we caught dolphin constantly, these weren't the little 3 to 5 pound bailers, they were 8 to ten with some going as much as 15. We had a ball, some taking as much as ten minutes to get in. We brought 45 back to the dock filling up the large canyon bag we carry. At an average of 8 to 9 lb we had over 300 lbs of fish on the boat. We had a good day and a long ride home. Larry Jock from the Coastal Fisherman come to take the picture for the paper and I will have a good video for the website soon. By the way, a lot of the boats that went to he Hot Dog brought back a nice bluefin, and burned less fuel, but we caught big fish almost all day. One more thing we did catch a tuna. A small blackfin. It took a trolled bait almost bigger than it was. It was a feisty little critter.
Capt Ken
- Capt. Ken