[Coiloil37]

Well the weather finally gave us a bit of a break so we decided to head out this morning. We hit the ramp at 3:40 and found a zoo but after waiting our turn we were on the water and heading out. After getting on the ocean we encountered a very short swell interval and approx 2m seas. This made for very slow going without pounding ourselves to pieces so we put out a few high speed trolling lures and ran out at about 15 knots.

Now approx a week and a half ago we got 350mm of rain in two days and had 9+ meter seas. This has turned the water an ugly green and there isn’t any “very” blue water until approx 30 miles out and the true blue water is pushing 50 miles out.

We got to the first fad without any bites on the high speed gear and found spear fishermen in the water so we diverted to the second fad. We made our first pass and hooked a little chicken about .75m long and put him in the kill tank. No photos but it was a little dolphin so... we all know what they look like.

We then started trolling for the third fad and about half way there saw a marlin with his dorsal and tail sticking out of the water. We made a pass on him and he checked a few of our lures out without a hit. A couple more figure 8’s didn’t invoke a strike so we kept going.
The third fad also had a ton of boat action and we only made two passes without a strike before pulling the pin and chasing some game boats out wide. As we went and put some more water under our keel the swell died down to a manageable meter but it was still short and tight with some odd rollers in the 2m range.

There were a lot of boats working the inside of the banks on the 21 mile so we deployed a spread and started trolling. About forty five minutes in as we started climbing the drop off from 60m to 30m the shotgun went off. I pulled it down and gave him strike drag and passed it off to Porter as he was still chasing his first marlin. He’s lost a few and been around for 20+ strikes but never landed one. Anyway, long story short




























The rest of the day was a bust. We saw one more marlin sunning itself that wouldn’t strike. We marked another half dozen or so marlin on the sounder that wouldn’t come up for a look




There was a lot of chatter between boats on the 2way and nobody else was hooking or raising any marlin but there were a few dorado landed. After a solid day of trying we rolled back into the yard around 17:00. Even though it was sloooooow, any day with a marlin landed counted as a success in my books.