Shipping Lanes - West Atlantis report

[RIROCKHOUND]

My last trip offshore for 2009, wife and I have a deal of no more time out of cellphone range in her last four weeks; she's due around the 9th of oct with our first.


Left Newport at 0200 and headed south of the dump to check the water and weather with 4 of us, My father Tautog01 on his boat 'Vahlalla rising', Rob Edwards and David Oakley (no relation). At 0430 we were south of the dump and the weather was as nice as forecasted so we continued south. Lines in @ 85miles ~ 0530 in a nice temp break 67-73. trolled the break for a while for no joy. were shocked we didn't pull a fish out of it at Dawn. Continued south in 77 deg water, starboard rigger goes off with a nice hit. I was watching the spread and saw the take, didn't look like a typical tuna knockdown, more of a slash on a rainbow daisy with black chugger. I was thinking Big Mahi or small mako, both of which have been common out there. Robbie (The orange man) fought it and got it to the boat, and when we had color it was a big Wahoo, a boat first. Given the teeth and lack of wire, I got a lucky gaff shot in the head before it could shake that big old head and slice the line, and managed it and hauled it in one motion (Dave got a video of that, hope it came out). Taped out at 61" straight fork length my guess was 55lb, but the online calculators say ~65lb, so who knows. Either way, big fish, and we didn't bring it home whole as it wouldn't fit in the big cooler w/ head and tail on, and we didn't want the hassle of breaking out the big-eye cooler bag. Turned around on the mark, redeployed the spread and had a hit which turned out to be a small white marlin, which dropped the hook on the first jump.

Continued working the area and headed south blind w/o a recent Temp shot that post dated the northerly blow on Sunday, and had 8+ hours of empty trolling save one mahi knockdown by a high flier in West Atlantis Water was so flat (Temp wise) at 78.2 deg we thought our sounder was broken. Talked to another boat who had one lost White marlin and no tuna. lifeless water

Continued north and found some slightly cooler water, and got a solid take-down which ended up being a ~60lb YFT. I'll get a picture eventually, Dave did a great job fighting his first real tuna, Robbie leadered it and got another lucky head shot with the gaff. Nothing else. Hit the high fliers south of the dump in the shipping lanes lanes for some small mahi and I got one nice cow that was ~17lbs on spinning gear.

total for the trip 230nmile of trolling and steaming for essentially 2 fish. from the lanes home was as FAC as I've ever seen it. 26kts the whole way home. Hit the dock around 2030. Long Day.