We left Rudee Inlet dark and early Saturday morning with the intention to fish through Sunday. On the way out engine problems caused us to not get out there until lunchtime. Fished around the 41300 out close to 500 fathoms. Hooked 5 whites, caught 3. Had some other encounters. Drifted the night with squid and a school of small jacks in the light all night. Caught one small swordfish. Wes Blow had brought chum so that was flowing all night. Never had a shark encounter. The sword ate a live spot. Back on the troll at first light and the engine problem was back. Starting trolling in on one engine and a white or two were in the spread. It was hard to see as it was not very light yet. Hooked one. No backing down with one engine so Wes just had to take is time from a dead boat. Fish were there but we had a long troll back to VA Beach so we kept heading west. Got jumped by dolphin, hooking several and a whole big school came in with them. The guys started slinging dolphin. We had moved everything back into the cockpit so we could tilt the engine hatch up. Dolphin were everywhere. I was scrambling to get stuff out of harms way. The guys started bailing and Charles Southall asked how many of these things do we want to catch? His son, Hunter, said “all of them”. We stopped at about 30 and “ran” away from those things.
I am supposed to be helping to tag roundscale spearfish with pop-up tags for Dr. John Graves but so far we have only caught whites. I also catch baby bluefin for the scientists each year and now is the time they should be here. We were at trolling speed so we pulled out the Spanish mackeral stuff and put out some spoons. We caught a frigate tuna and then from about 30 fathoms on in, we could not troll 5 feet without hooking up false albacore. Stan Simmerman and his 13-year-old son, Deven were fishing with us. Deven was having a blast with those things. We were never going to get home. Again, I asked, how many do you want to catch? Deven would not quit. We finally just took the spoons out of the water.The dolphin were full of little jacks. The false albacore were spitting up sand eels. Wes kept a dozen of the alberts for future bait.
The Healthy Grin is at Dare Marina. They say that I will be good to go by Thursday. I love Dare Marina. www.daremarina.com
Fishing is good, get out there if you can.
