. Another angle:
. He went right at 40 lbs by the scale.We hit some rigs in 1200 feet but only managed one bullet blackfin which will be featured on my grill or skillet this weekend.
The next day we were limited by needed sleep and thunder storms to a quick afternoon run of 40 miles for our snapper limit. At first we couldn't catch anything but 20-24 inch sand trout. We got several of these out of the way and the snapper turned on for us to make quick work of 8 keepers.
The next day we headed out around 1 or 2 for one of the "nearby" floaters for what we knew would be a fish box full of chicken of the sea. 85 miles later we pulled up to this:
.The problem was the water 85 miles out still looked a lot like the muddy Missippi. There being no blue water, there were no flying fish and no big tuna or other pelagics to chase them. We managed a bunch of bonita and another bullet, plus a 5 foot shark. We saw one yellowfin break the water and that was it. With nightfall, instead of plenty of surface action, it became dead. We fished til about 0200 and decided since we were headed home that morning we would cut our losses. With the other three asleep on deck I began idling back in to cut some time off of our highseas voyage back, since the winds were getting up and I did not look forward to 85 miles of rough water if the larger waves followed the wind. Gave up the helm a few hours later for some sleep which was interrupted by some brilliant lightening back toward Ursa which we thankfully had left. It was an incredible show but a little too close to enjoy so we battened down the hatches and lit the afterburners to get us back to the shallow rigs an hour or so later. We had to wake up the snapper and it looked like we might strike out at old reliable. The seas weren't too great but the current could have been mistake for the Colorado River with the spring snowmelt under way. We managed to tie up to the rig and wake the fish up for a fairly quick limit of snaps plus a couple of ribbon fish which I forgot to photograph.
Ran back 40 miles or so, packed up and a short 11 hours later we're back home as if nothing happened.
It is tough to line up a trip two months early and have mother nature's full cooperation, so I guess we'll try an unannounced try next time the blue water and big fish reports look more in line with our wishes. It was a great first trip down there. Thank goodness there were 24 ARS left in the world for us to catch.
Nuts
