After the little mans marlin we had been chatting with another boat working the area. He had caught two and was leadering the third when it got a bit rambunctious and he didn’t drop the line quick enough. The leader cut three of his fingers bad enough he had to tape them up and head in to the hospital.
We carried on and shortly later scored another decent dolphin which rosi brought aboard for the kill tank. You can see it lit up blue in the pic here.
Now I’m not sure how we screwed this one up but rosi also took the next strike which happened to be another little black
At that point Nolan told me he wanted some sashimi and we needed a wahoo or yellowfin. I agreed but told him that was mostly out of my control. Rosi said the Spaniards made decent sashimi so I mixed up some soy and wasabi and took about a lb out of the Spaniards shoulder and we all had a good feed. We then decided we better start trolling toward home. We didn’t want to leave but we were down to about 60 litres of fuel and had a 70+km run back to the boat ramp. So we set sail for port on the troll and decided to pull the gear once we got back to where we caught that marlin a week ago. On the way I put a nomad in the water to try and entice a yellowfin off the thermocline. We just about made it back to the banks when it fired and Porter took the rod. From the head shakes it was a tuna and we got excited for some good eating.
Unfortunately when it got to surface we realised it was only a skipjack and destined to be bait.
We rolled across the banks and 21 mile without a strike although we marked a lot of bait and saw some pilchards busting up on surface then pulled the spread and made the run in.
The marlin were small but plentiful and it was a fun day with all the bycatch and multiple strikes.
Back to work as of today for another fortnight but hopefully the swell cooperates next break and we can get back into them.