What an awesome fish! The toughest meanest battle I have had. The fight was incredible, like taking punches from a prize fighter. The headshake will just about pull your arm from its socket. The rod jolted hard in the rod-holder on the strike and nearly came out (it was tethered)
After a day of lack luster trolling we got covered with 3 bigeyes at the same time right at dark on the west wall of hydro. Was only able to land one. It went 154. I was spent and we took turns on the reel. 4 amazing runs deep into the spool and the 5th was straight down 800' I could not believe it. And I had some serious heat on this thing too on an 80W. One of the other hookups was on the new stella 30000...what a sound that reel made!! but the hook was not set well and it pulled during the first run off.

The next day after a pick of mahi and albacore we got lucky in the afternoon and found big yellows and albacore stacked up against a temp break. The two we kept were 76 and 84#. The albacore were about 40 or so.

On the way in we saw large bluefin crashing on halfbeaks out by the banna in 65 deg water. We slowed but did not pursue as we were out of ice and had a ways to go. If we would have caught one of them we would have had a tuna grand slam...BF, YF, albacore and BE. :)

Not a lights out trip but certainly a memorable one. I did not take a lot of photos as there was only two of us and I was busy doing other things most of the time.

We burned 125 gallons of diesel, transit cruise at 27, and trolled for two days all day once we arrived.

Great post! Congrats on a great trip. :drool:

Sounds like a great trip, were up to buddy boat if your going again soon.

I will post before we go on the next trip... it's quite a run from Boston though, you might want to stay the night in ACK and top-off before you make a trip like that. I was planning to go next week but my plans just got shot down...need to go in for a prostate biopsy and can't go on the boat for 3-4 days afterwards. So next week is shot to hell. Aging really sucks, I want to be 23 again, my body is falling apart. But I will be out there again this season as soon as all my stars align.

Speaking of stars...it was a new moon out there, pitch black and flat ass calm and no clouds at all, cool and clear like sept. The sky was amazing...you could see stars from horizon to horizon, it was really something. And we grilled up some tenderloin steaks for dinner out there...it was fun. Other than putting a jig down 150' and attaching it to an outrigger tip, (it went unmolested) I really didn't fish the night I went to sleep and woke up at 4:00 and hit it again. A lot of guys younger than me fish all night chunking or seek a swordfish. I have to say I have not really put the night time effort in on most of my trips.

Well done, and good luck next week! First eye?

Cool!

Good luck on the scope

Speaking of stars...it was a new moon out there, pitch black and flat ass calm and no clouds at all, cool and clear like sept. The sky was amazing...you could see stars from horizon to horizon, it was really something. And we grilled up some tenderloin steaks for dinner out there...it was fun. Other than putting a jig down 150' and attaching it to an outrigger tip, (it went unmolested) I really didn't fish the night I went to sleep and woke up at 4:00 and hit it again. A lot of guys younger than me fish all night chunking to seeking a swordfish. I have to say I have not really put the night time effort in on most of my trips.

RIR and I were out there too during Tues/Wed farther to the west but did not fare nearly as well as Jim. Covered 330 mi on the trip and got 2 yellowfin and 6 mahi. I was supper psyched since I had gone 0-6 on trips looking for yellow!

We did stay up all night and were amazed at the sky and the Milky Way was phenomenal! Shooting stars all night along with bombs bursting in air, I guess the Navy does live fire exercises at night?

For our O/N chumming efforts we got one 5' blue dawg to visit the boat.

The dolphin shows were also unreal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEEJPTu6r-k

nice bigeye sandman, congrats

2 years ago I had one in the same place that I fought for 2+ hours and it broke off 50' from the boat... I was actually relived as my arms and back were in spasms at that point. This was the first one boated for me.

Phil...Nice first YF!! They can exceed 100# out there. I saw a comm guy at the truck yesterday, and he had one that went 125, it was an impressive beast. My 86 had a 43" girth.

The 50 fathom contour is were all the yellows were stacked up

Nice trip, wish I was with you! Good luck with the biopsy.

We will be trailering my buddy's 31' Jupiter with twin 225's
The fishbucket is an 18 knot boat, too slow for canyon run.

that's awesome! I just got a offshore capable boat( picking it up Tuesday) and probally wont be ready for any trips like this this year but next year im on it! maybe we could put together a striped-bass buddy boat trip!

Awesome, congrats Jim!

That's friggin awesome to be able to that kind of trip.

Congrats on the big eye and good luck with the biopsy sandman.

Nice yellow buzz!
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Nice work Jim! The BE bite out there has been ridiculous with fish ups to 270 lbs being brought in. Good luck with the Biopsy.

Congrats, i love reading stories like this. Ita fishing crack/porn, like reading playboys storys, when i was a kid!
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Yellow eyed devils!