The Fishing Hole

matt86m said:
Got a fish story for ya!

Set out with one of my boat partners and another friend out of Dana Point. Busy for a Friday. Got a scoop & ice and we were off. Headed to the East end of the island. Decided to troll about half way there while looking for paddy's and maybe get lucky on a blind strike. Got a daisy chain and a MadScad in tow.

Lots of radio traffic on 72, entertaining, not a lot of spots producing, should have been out Wednesday.

Fast forward to noon, haven't seen a damn thing all day, we finally spot a small paddy with jumping Doroado (5-7lbs) make a pass for nada, pull in the trollers and make a couple drifts by the paddy, we are the only boat. Dodo's move off but come back a few times, we are fly lining deans and my boat partner Brian gets picked up.

Line goes tight and its on, but this is no 5-7lb dodo, he's on a 20lb rod n reel, Torium 20, braid with 100yd mono

He's getting down to the bottom of the spool and I start the boat and now we are chasing the fish. This goes on for the next 3 hours! BFT are a$$holes! Brian get's on the bow and that made things easier. He got the tuna 15' from the boat a half a dozen times but it would just peel off the mono again. Buddy is in the tower and can see the fish, est 36'' long. We tried everything we could think of, chased him, let him just pull, tried to run him down! He was tail wrapped for a bit, could feel it and see it once when he was close to the boat.

Brian kept inching the drag just a bit tighter but we couldn't break the damn fish.

Brian is pulling as he had been and suddenly he rocks back and the line goes limp! Pulled the hook!!!

1/0 hook is still tied on the line, great knot, just wore a hole in his face and shook at the right time and he was gone.

This would have been the first BFT on our boat.

Win some lose some.

Pretty bumpy ride back in licking our wounds!
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Dang it!

As for those lock jaw dorado, try chunking the sardines and throw out a few handfuls along with some flylined chunks. I've caught dorado like this on private boats 3 times. Yellowfin as well.

Going next weekend and hoping this paddy fishing holds up. I need some fish in the freezer. Preferably yellowtail and maybe we'll find some yellowfin that want to bite. Bluefin can come on one of our last 2 charters.

 
Did one of my favorite trips of the year last week. I hosted four wounded Vets on a 3 day, 2 night trip on my boat. This is a trip I do each year with the Outdoors For Our Heroes foundation. The 3 day haul of fish they keep was:

24 Halibut, 4 Kings, 16 Coho, 12 Pinks, 1 Ling Cod, 3 Black Sea Bass and a little over 5 gallons of spot prawn tails. In all, they took home over 250 lbs of vacuum packed fillets.

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matt86m said:
Got a fish story for ya!

Set out with one of my boat partners and another friend out of Dana Point. Busy for a Friday. Got a scoop & ice and we were off. Headed to the East end of the island. Decided to troll about half way there while looking for paddy's and maybe get lucky on a blind strike. Got a daisy chain and a MadScad in tow.

Lots of radio traffic on 72, entertaining, not a lot of spots producing, should have been out Wednesday.

Fast forward to noon, haven't seen a damn thing all day, we finally spot a small paddy with jumping Doroado (5-7lbs) make a pass for nada, pull in the trollers and make a couple drifts by the paddy, we are the only boat. Dodo's move off but come back a few times, we are fly lining deans and my boat partner Brian gets picked up.

Line goes tight and its on, but this is no 5-7lb dodo, he's on a 20lb rod n reel, Torium 20, braid with 100yd mono

He's getting down to the bottom of the spool and I start the boat and now we are chasing the fish. This goes on for the next 3 hours! BFT are a$$holes! Brian get's on the bow and that made things easier. He got the tuna 15' from the boat a half a dozen times but it would just peel off the mono again. Buddy is in the tower and can see the fish, est 36'' long. We tried everything we could think of, chased him, let him just pull, tried to run him down! He was tail wrapped for a bit, could feel it and see it once when he was close to the boat.

Brian kept inching the drag just a bit tighter but we couldn't break the damn fish.

Brian is pulling as he had been and suddenly he rocks back and the line goes limp! Pulled the hook!!!

1/0 hook is still tied on the line, great knot, just wore a hole in his face and shook at the right time and he was gone.

This would have been the first BFT on our boat.

Win some lose some.

Pretty bumpy ride back in licking our wounds!
Click to expand...
Dam invasive scum sucking fish!

 
Spize909 said:
Dang it!

As for those lock jaw dorado, try chunking the sardines and throw out a few handfuls along with some flylined chunks. I've caught dorado like this on private boats 3 times. Yellowfin as well.

Going next weekend and hoping this paddy fishing holds up. I need some fish in the freezer. Preferably yellowtail and maybe we'll find some yellowfin that want to bite. Bluefin can come on one of our last 2 charters.
Click to expand...
Think these Dorado are hungry? I like the one in the middle of the bait! :lol:  

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Air450 said:
I wish I knew!
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We saw some puddling around yesterday down south of the Coronados but couldn't get any to go. Got a nice 45-50lb yellowfin in the dark fishing the bluefin last night. Only one 25lb bluefin to go with it. Limits of dorado and a handful of yellowtail filled out our day.

 
OH MY GOD, I got out on a 3/4 charter on Friday and got a look at the volume of the dorado out there. It's crazy. It was like bluefin fishing. We were chasing schools around (that were not biting that well) under the birds. I've never seen dorado acting the way they are. The stuff we fished off of Ensenada last weekend was nothing like this.

As for the fishing, in the end, me and my 3 buddies that fish on my charters caught most of the 46 fish on the boat. We handed a ton off and every one went home with fish (16 person charter on the Helena). Lots of fun! I go again on the 10th on a reverse 1.5 day charter with my group. Should be interesting. Lots of options with a shot at fishing dorado, tuna down by the Nados and SCI all in the same trip!

 
We were supposed to depart Saturday morning at 7 am on a reverse 1.5 day charter on the Fury. We had high expectations of this trip and everything was really biting well so we were looking at a few different options. Needless to say, the trip was cancelled due to that hurricane thing. We watched the weather for a couple days and my crew all still wanted to go fishing so we revised it to a 5 to 5 all day trip on Sunday.

We weren't sure what we'd find out there but the water was clean and the paddies were still there and most were holding dorado. We fished our way out to what I think was a few miles west of the 277 and picked away at them all day until it was time to head home. We never found a wide open batch of fish but still managed to put a bunch on the boat.

The seiner fleet was out there a few miles west of us and Capt. Marcus said they were on small yellowfin. That's a good sign. I think I saw @Air450 flying around closer to SCI off in the distance..........probably trying to lure the private boaters away from where the fish really were! :classic_biggrin:

 
If anybody is interested I have a 2 day trip departing H & M landing in San Diego on the Relentless on Friday January 20th at 6p and return Sunday at 6pm. We will most likely target yellowtail and rockfish in the Punta Colonet area on day 1 and fish North of there on day 2. Could also be some bluefin fishing as well. Cost is $440 Passports required.

I have 3, maybe 4 spots open.

 
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