July 1, 2006 – Trolling for Tuna

On Saturday we headed out on the “Just One More” for a tuna trip. We headed out for the East Lump and got there pretty early. I think we were out of the boat slip by 6:00 AM, maybe even earlier. As we approached the site Dave S. and I started rigging up the reels with an assortment of rigs, a bird with squids, a cedar plug, a jet head, and some purple and black thing. Somebody forgot to take the plastic covers off of some of the hooks before they we thrown in. I’ll take some of the responsibility for that, but I didn’t know they were on in the first place. Anyhow when the 300 lb Blue Fin Tuna chomped down on the plastic hook cover he just spit it out. No such luck.

We trolled around for about an hour with no real excitement, except for when we would pull the line out and set the clickers off just to mess with the other guys. Then Capt. Randy relinquished the helm to his brother Jim. We headed over to a few other lumps nearby and the center rod, the one up in the rocket launcher, went off. Jim didn’t believe us at first, but I kept telling him to hit the Man Over Board button to mark the spot. Dave S. grabbed the rod and starting reeling in the monster, and then he thought it came off. Then Capt. Randy told him to keep winding it in to check, and low and behold we had us a Bonita, about 15 inches. We through it back and never took a picture.

We trolled around that spot a few more times and had a few quick run offs, but nothing else. We were back at the marina by 1:00 PM, where we all enjoyed a few too many beers. Later that evening we had one hell of a barbeque.

Sunday was a blow out, not good since I had some visitors hoping to fish.
Monday, don’t even get me start about Monday.