SuzyQ 08-17-08 - Yes, Viginia, they DO bite on a full moon...

[Sea Hag]

Saturday morning my friend Tim called to ask if I wanted to come fish with him and a couple of friends Sunday, 8/17 out of San Diego on his 26' Striper, SuzyQ. One more cancellation, and we ended up with only three of us. Me, Tim, and his friend Scott.

We launched from Shelter Island and got underway at about 3AM. We made a quick stop at the bait dock. The guys warned us that it wasn't so good bait, so Tim took a little less than usual so they would have some more room. Still, we had some live ones left when we got back to the dock after a full day fishing, and although a lot of them were splotched with red, all of them were real lively and ran well.

Tim started with a plan to work a fairly long North/South temp break that started around 08/38 and run North past the 302, and then zag across the San Clemente Basin up towards the Butterfly. We had weather on the way out and we hit our starting numbers a little after 4AM. I slept a fair amount on the way out and was dead asleep when Tim shut the engines down. Having done the usual " fishman's all nighter thing", Tim figured he'd catch an hour or so of sleep and start fishing at dawn. Scott had no such thoughts and apparently went straight to fishing right on the drift.

Just as the very first gray light hits, Scott nails a little Albie on the iron and drops it onto the deck. I'll tell you what... I think the sound of a fish slapping on fiberglass first thing in the morning would make an EXCELLENT ALARM CLOCK! I hit my head as I charged out of that cabin to grab a pole! I hadn't rigged anything (bad girl!), tied a hook on my 30#. Tim said I looked like I had my first bait in the water while I was still asleep!

We flip our first baits in the water and BOOM... I am first. But this "little Albie" that I hooked starts pulling line like crazy... I was on a NICE Yellowfin Tuna! No sooner had her reel started screaming when BAM.. both Scott and Tim are on. TRIPLES going first thing in the morning and we hadn't even had coffee yet! Tim and Scott are calling "deep color" and we all just looked at each other... uh-oh! I did the only civilized thing I could, and dumped mine to gaff Scott and Tim's fish. Ok, ok, I farmed it... forgot to check my drag, and it was totally wrong (bad girl!). We also decided somehow that we were going become "fin farmers" and lost quite a few, but within our first 40 minutes of the day, we had an Albie and 6 YFT on board. Not a bad start!



By then, we had drifted off our numbers quite a bit, so we trolled back up for a few more Abies. And then again, and we found a nice paddy in the same area. We picked up another YFT and a couple of Yellowtail. It wasn't wide open, but a pretty good pick for a while. Another boat was in the area that wasn't quite as lucky as we were that morning, so Tim called them in and they managed to pull in a few nice fish.



After that, things got pretty slow. We were metering fish EVERYWHERE and lots of them, but the YFT didn't want to play. We did pick up a few small Albies here and there, but that was it. By then, the wind chop had increased to the point that it would have been pretty crappy heading to the fly. Heard some "radio fish" a few miles North of where we were, and so we broke fishing rule number 1 "never leave fish to find fish" Oops! Waste of gas and time for a couple of Doritos.

By the end of the day we came back through our original area for a few more Albies. Some sporties had moved in by that time and seemed to be stopped a lot, but we couldn't get the YFT to play.



We headed back to the barn in heavy chop where we really couldn't see a paddy unless we drove right over it... which we did a couple of times. Picked up a Dodo and that's it.



BUT!!! Going back past the Coronados, there was some REALLY nice YFT foaming around. They looked to be well over 60, with some jumping clean out of the water that honestly looked over 100 lbs. Couldn't get them to go on troll or bait in the 10 minutes or so that we had before it got dark.

End of the day score.. 7 YFT, 9 Albies, 2 Yellowtail, 3 Dorado. So I guess the fish DO bite on a full moon!

[Mutt]

looks like a fun time