So what do we do when it's blowing too hard to fish?

Today I piddled around on the boat for a little while, but to tell you the truth, with all the windy weather we have had, I'm just about piddled out! Everything is ready to go, new line on all the reels, now all we need is weather and people. I was cleaning up my email today and came across these pictures that a party sent me last year. I thought you would enjoy them, so here they are! <BR>South wind forcasted for this week, so the warm temps will be nice!

We didn't have a lot of bites today, but the ocean provided us with plenty of action!

It blew out of the southwest pretty good all day, and things started out pretty good with the fishing, but fell right off for us. We caught a 20 pound king as soon as we started fishing, and a 25 pound wahoo shortly after that. There were a few blackfins being caught, but as rough as it was, I didn't feel like getting in the middle of the crowd, so I worked back in to the color change, in 35 fathoms, and to the south west. We had a mystery bite or two, and pulled off a mako, but never caught any thing else in the afternoon.<scr<sc

We pretty much made our day jigging amberjacks, but it was non-stop action.

A few of us trolled offshore insearch of a yellowfin bite, but there really wasn't much found. We did have one heavy shortrigger bite in about 180 fathoms, but it pulled off. It sounded like the blackfin tuna action was pretty good back inshore, so we worked back in that way to give it a try. We did catch a couple, but the amberjacks were wearing us out on light gear. I don't know how many we released, 20 or 30, but we kept one per person, as the law allowed. Everybody had a great time. There were some bluefins found late, east of where we were.

We found some good action today that enabled us to break down with some lighter tackle, and still put a lot of food on the table.

The yellowfins were still scarce today, but we found a nice area of bonita mackerels to catch. Don't confuse these with oceanic bonitas (skipjacks) and certainly not with false albacore. These fish resemble the oceanic bonita, except they have teeth, and the meat is pretty white. They were all about the same size, 4-5 pounders, so we broke out the TLDs to have some fun. They actually pull pretty good on the lighter stuff. I've eaten them before, so I knew how good they were to eat. I've never seen a concentration of them like this before though. We stayed pretty busy for a couple of hours. We also caught a handful of kings and a couple citation spanish mackerel to boot. Everybody had a blast!

It was such a treat to be offshore today, on a calm ''t-shirt'' day.

There were only two of us offshore today, and I would have to say things are begining to show some promise. As anticipated, I fished about as far south as I could. We fished down the break, had a few bites, mostly albacore, one bonita mackerel, and a couple mystery bites. The other boat worked out in the deep, about ten miles east of me, and saw a couple places of yellowfins rolling on the surface. He actually had a couple bites, and caught two. I saw some life that may have been tunas, but I didn't get close enough to get a confirmation. We did catch our first gaffer dolphin of the year, and in the afternoon dropped down to the bottom to try our luck on the snowy groupers. We did well, catching our limit, including a 41 pounder and a 42 pounder. Another great day!

The weatherman was right on with his forcast, but fishing was kinda slow today.

There were five of us out today, and we all started in the same general area, and spread out from there. I chose the trek to the deep, all the way out to 700 fathoms, but never found what I was hoping for. One boat stayed in shallow, and three worked up to the northeast between 100-200 fathoms. One boat caught two yellowfins, we caught one nice blackfin, and there was one other blackfin caught. The good news was that the current fell out to a trickle, but I wasn't in a good location to drop down to the bottom, or I would have given the groupers a try. I am anxios to head south again to see what's new down there.

The ocean was alive with 60-90 pound bluefins today.

Due to the size (and screwed up laws) we could only bring in one of the bluefins that we caught, an 85 pounder. I guess we released another eight or nine, but it was amazing to see all the life out there today. Truly a treat. All of these fish were released except one.