Anyone see one of these before?

[donno]

I found one in MA13 (Olympia) back in 07.

[TexMojoII]

Two years ago out of westport, we were chasing tuna and came up on alot of activity, there had to be around 30 of these things swimming around but none of them were longer than 1.5 feet, wonder if the mother was around. Anyway, we hit tuna right smack dab in the middle of them.

[cmartin50]

my dad hit one once while driving our 31' tiara from avalon to cat harbor, blood boiled out of our wake behind the boat , although it did kink up the prop the boat managed to get back to newport not so sure about the mola mola

[Buzz2401]

I have seen quite a few of those and a few years back i seen a huge basking shark which I thought was cool. Always something cool to see out on the ocean.

[winningman]

I highly doubt the reason the jig was in the mouth was due to an accidental snag. It probably thought your jig was a fish or a squid and ate it.

They are NOT vegetarian. Its a misconception. "The diet of the ocean sunfish consists primarily of various jellyfish. It also consumes salps, squid, crustaceans, small fishes, fish larvae, and eel grass.[." Their favorite food is the moon jelly fish, they will eat anything that they can chase down or is in front of them.

The TED video is interesting too since she explained the name "Mola Mola" is not actually a Hawaiian name, but a Latin word for "millstone" due to the roundish shape (3.07 in the video).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_sunfish
http://www.ted.com/talks/tierney_thy...t_sunfish.html

thanks

[blantz]

I hit one out of Lapush last August. There was a blood pool behing the boat and it dropped my rpm about 1500 on impact. It was a solid hit, I was just glad I was able to finish my fishing trip and didn't wreck my prop or volvo outdrive. They are pretty cool looking when they skip across the rollers.

[Hale Nalu]

They can be pretty common offshore during the summertime.

They may not look like it, but they can swim pretty fast and actually jump pretty high out of the water. The smaller size ones, will really get you fired up thinking it is tuna jumping only to be chasing down dinner plate size molas. Some days it is a free for all with jumping molas.

It is not unusual to see groups of the dinner plate sized fish in large quantities and they will often head right to the boat and circle when you are on a jig drift for tuna. Not common to see multiple large versions.

Largest I have seen was at least 9 foot in diameter, though I believe they get bigger. They are slimy buggers and a pain to unhook when a sharp troll jig gets caught in them.

Here's a pic of one I was trying to get loose and keep my troll jig....

[Ugly Bayliner]

See them all the time out of Westport, they were pretty thick last summer on tuna runs.

[Cap'n Poon]

Seen em out of wesport numerous times! The ones I've seen look like their dying, like the water is too warm or too cold?

[Tower Todd]

I've seen a few absolute moster sized molas. Like Nalu said they can really air things out when they jump, including the big ones. We had one that we estimate around 600-800 jump 3 or 4 feet out of the water. It will get your attention.

TT