Last week I was out on a late afternoon trip in search of Tuna and found none. The next morning I fished a half day trip with the same intention yet found no tunas... again(although my sister and my g/f did catch their first sails on each trip!). Both of those days I was live chumming but the only thing 300 pilchards circling my boat seemed to attract were kingfish, Sailfish, and lots of Bonitos!
I called Ben aka SnapperNapper last night after the heat game with much of the same intentions; load up with hundreds of pilchards and live chum for tunas. Before we knew it it was 2 am and we were in search of pilchards in the Cut and a few other spots in the bay I know of. Last night...my 'honey pilchard holes" failed me. Sometime around 4am I found myself at B-cut bridge waiting to the pilchards to show up in the light when the inevitable sound of snook and tarpon busting around us made Ben and I tickle. I scoop out a shrimp who swam to close to my boat and put him on a mono line rod<fishing under brindge pilings, bad combo> . I freeline this first shrimp when BAM! A tarpon starts jumping through the pilings and soon....pink. :thumbdown: Ohh well....We re-rig and try to catch the fish that were busting all around us. We would not be blessed with anymore solid bites but were only able to manage a few of these..
We decided to call it quits and head to the spot that has produced in the past, bug light. From the time we arrived<pre-sunrise> till post sunrise we only manage about 5 dozen pilchards. A little dissapointing to say the least. Ben and I set up the drift, rig the rods/bait and set out the kite.
The lack of sleep and conditions out there were making me tired. I wanted to take a 'power nap' but ben kept fishing. I was beginining to take this 'power nap' when I hear Ben yell at some guy that successfully motored between two of our kite lines :bang: which woke me up. Anyway...I begin to rig up a line with a wire after having the small circle with flourocarbon cut off multiple times when suddenly Ben says; I think theres something on the long kite. I drop what I'm doing and grab the rod. I feel it pop out of the clip and begin to reel. The 5 inch blue runner that was on as bait was soon convereted to a 27lb Blackfin tuna. Nice.
We saw kings skyrocket and cut us off on the kite but we never put wire since we wanted more BFT. We miss one more fish on a circle hook on the kite which we believe to be a BF; or we can just call it that
. Ben , thanks for your help and its great to have another fun day on the water.
Sweet Victory!