You concern is well taken and valid. I personally like ride down - ride back trips, because you just get more fishing time. Let’s face it, if we were getting big schools of #25 - 50 pound yellowfin all over the shorter trips then my post wouldn’t be needed. But the fishing has changed in our waters, the bait is small and a huge amount of boat traffic within 150miles off of SD. I just came off a 8-day, two days travel to the ridge, picked up limits of yellowtail for two days (awesome, love yellowtail) then two days travel up north to fish 50 mi off of SD for two days with all the center consoles. That was a great decision by the captain, because that is all there was and each of my daughters caught a #50 tuna by themselves at 2am because I was down with Covid.
Now with that there are Long Range boats I won’t fish and each boat has its own grove and clicks. Interesting there are some trips that are really closed and you have to be “vetted” before you get on the list, like a trip that everyone brings at least 1/2 a gallon of booze and 10 pounds of marinated meat, barbecue’s and bags of briquettes. The boat has to have two rovers to keep a eye on everyone. They put all the booze on one table in the galley and bunji cord them all together the whole trip. These trips are typically all booked up and there is seldom a opening on those trips. There are also long trips where there pretty much there a 7 anglers fishing most of the time because the average age of the anglers is like 70yrs old. They have the crew hold the kite rods and call them in from the galley when they get bit, etc. There are more options than just the Hurricane, there are some “buffer” zones that you may be able to fish as well. Some boats 12/9 ride down , fish all the lower banks, fly back from cabo. or fly down/fly back from Cabo. I personally fish hard and like a boat that has high fish counts, captains that work hard.
Like we were at the bank with two other boats, and at dark we were driving all over the bank catching live flyers (they have extra nets for passengers who want to help) for the kites the next day, the other two boats didn’t move all night. So what happens the next day on the other boats? They claim we caught more fish because we had the “Alpha” spot but the current swings so much at the bank we anchored in different spots each day. We had sharks collecting on us at night so the captain moved us 5 miles offshore at night, then slid us back in at 3am and I think the other boats were having shark problems.
The most fun of the trip was we went to the “Buffer Zone” to get some Mac’s , well a huge squall moved in and it was like a monsoon , not cold , no real wind, just lighting and a massive down pour like I have never seen. So I told my son let’s get our grundens at fish for bait, so the crew member was nailing the bait and all three of us caught like 200 pieces in a hour, we caught the bait for the whole boat. So I am now focused on the adventure and experience of the things I do.
Good fishing
