Forgive the lapse in time between parts 1 and 2… working 5 weeks of 12-hour days straight without a break tends to sap one’s creative energies and writing ability (the things we do to go long range fishing…)
Nonetheless, as promised, here’s part two of the story.
Ruby Tuesday found us on the southern part of the Ridge… rhapsodizing on the dawn (AKA Aurora) is beginning to give way to worshipping the porcelain god – No! Not that one! The COFFEE CUP!! Yup, a steaming cup of Java is sometimes worthy of worship…
But pictures of coffee don’t really cut it… so…
(Yeah, yeah, I’m recycling a sunrise photo – see the first sentence…)
This portion of the report will have basically no pictures (Editors note: damn guy snuck a few in as you’ll see, probably for the better), but get your fill of photos in Part 1, there are a bunch there.
And at some point, an actual video of the trip will be posted by Marty (I’m just happy to get my report finished before the video! … well, almost at this point).
Anyway, we were back at it, chasing after a few bigger yellows. Amazing how those fish can rock you even on 100lb gear. Don’t ask me how I know. Still, we put a fair amount in the hold, but again, too many reds.
What to do, what to do? Well, drop in the trollers and pick up some ‘hoo! Not a whole heck of a lot, but we are just whetting our appetites for the wahoo-palooza to come in a few days.
Did a stop for some grouper and there were a few take downs, but none stuck. I believe one guy hooked a good one on a man bait, but it played the ol’ Queen anthem and rocked him. C’est la vie.
Eventually, word came down from on high, the word we were all waiting for – we’re headed to make bait! YES! We’re going to get some… uh… mackerel? No, wait…
Wait, that’s not it… we’re headed to make bait… and then steaming overnight to the land of the giants, Cowtown! Yeah, that word…
A'chunking we shall go
A'chunking we shall go
Hi ho the tuna-o
A'chunking we shall go...
Captain Mike made the decision – probably aided by the fact that there were already 2 or 3 boats plying the Potato Bank – to give the Lusitania Bank a go. We would make other moves in upcoming days due to the normal give-and-take of locations between the LR boats which paid off in big ways. While Lusitania didn’t quite fit that bill, it wasn’t like anyone was filling the RSW tanks with tuna at the Potato – a fish a day seemed to be the word.
Anyway, we woke up pre-dawn and started fishing. A couple guys hooked up almost immediately on BIG things! Unfortunately, they weren’t tuna. At least one was a thresher, the other probably another shark. Bummer.
As the sun rose and through the morning, more big fish started getting hooked. Again unfortunately, they were all those damn trash fish. Yep, striped marlin. Damn them! I’ll admit they are very cool to see – jumping, screaming 100 yards of line straight out, flashing colors – as long as all that is at the end of someone else’s rod. Somehow, I hooked three and managed to purposely pull the hook on all of them. Success! Gimme my gear back, I want a tuna… or, if no tuna, I’ll happily take…
Aurora!!!
OOOOPS!!! Sorry, Jason, don’t delete it, it’s ART my man! You left it the first time…I know I said no more pics but, c’mon, that’s a lot of words without any pictures.
We like pictures on BD. And we’ve seen a lot of damn fish and food porn, so… some art.
(If you haven’t read part one of this incredibly long-winded and delinquent {but really effin’ cool} fish report… I highly suggest you do so… you’ll get a lot of the references… and get to see Aurora again! – hot damn!! And a whole helluva lot of other photos)
Anyhoo, Aurora rocks. You know you like it…
Around mid-day, with no tuna for our efforts, we headed for the Potato.
As sometimes happens on these trips, we randomly came across a floating bonanza, I think it may have been a mattress. And floating mattresses, or anything else for that matter, can be just filthy with dorado. As was this one. The usual mayhem many of you are familiar with ensued… lines crossed, fish flying, deck covered… dodo’s here, dodo’s there, dodo’s everywhere.
Not being a huge fan of RSW crushed dorado filling up my freezer, I opted to toss out a hookless Rapala just for shits and giggles. I got a few grabs and tugs and then heard above the din and clamor of the wide-open bite, Captain Mike atop the bait well say, “Somebody should drop a bomb off the bow about 200 feet.”
Hmmmm… dorado or wahoo? You don’t have to tell me twice. I made a beeline for my wahoo jig rod, tied on one of those gray and pink Salas jigs, and dropped it straight down off the bow. Boom! First wind in, I’m bit!
Now, I’d not caught a wahoo before on anything but bait or trolling. But I read BD a lot... (eye-roll emoji in this spot)…
So… wind, Wind, WIND!!! Rod pointed at the fish, I wound Wound WOUND!. And in short order, a 35 pound wahoo was ready for the gaff. Noice! What do you know, kudos to the guys that tell you how to do shit on BD.
Funny aside – Shaun, who would get a decent tuna later on – caught the smallest wahoo on record, I’m pretty sure. If it didn’t have that cool wahoo striping, I’d have sworn he had a decent barracuda. In fact, it wasn’t a wahoo at all – it was a WEE-hoo. Little bitty thing, I tell you. Literally. His chagrin was short lived, though, because… it was a REALLY decent tuna he would soon catch.
With the blood lust sated, Mike called an end to the dodo-mania. We pulled the hook, dropped a marker on that mattress for other boats, and headed to the Potato Parking Lot.
Mid-afternoon we settled in a few hundred yards from the Vagabond and one or two other boats, can’t recall who at this point in time. The names would change overnight, but still 3 of us at least through the following day. I swear, those damn marlin followed us, though, and that would be all we hooked for that afternoon. Trash fish, I tell you, trash fish…
Mike told us that if we landed 3 or 4 good tuna the following day – December 1st – we’d give Cowtown a second day. But the skinny from the other boats was not promising – one fish for one boat, none, I think for one or two others.
Nonetheless, we settled in with high hopes and much determination for the following day, having rigged the heavy gear for chunking and the slightly less heavy gear for fly-lining, and enjoyed a fine repast and various libations, then nestled snug in our beds, with visions of super-cows dancing in our heads…
You Say “Potato,” Shaun says “Hi Ho the Super Cow OH!”
Yeah, so, one thing about my friend Shaun… he gets his mind set on something and he’s all in… I mean, like, ALL IN.
I did my first LR trip in 2017 – a solo 7-day trip on the Searcher, Capt. Art at the helm (great guy, love that boat!). A bunch of guys at work were real interested in this “new” type of fishing (Alaska guys, halibut and salmon being their norm), but when I told Shaun about my trip, he was onboard in a heartbeat. Boom! We were booked on the Vagabond for a 7-day the next fall in short order. Gotta love that kind of commitment…
So we did seven days for a couple years, then 10-day trips the past two years, then… well, a 12-day trip, with a day or two to target the bigguns… because, why not???
Anyway, Shaun went sort of bonkers, buying the heavy gear, his heart set on a big fish… no, a BIG fish, and wound up buying not one, but two real heavy setups. Ostensibly, one for backup, but being the kind of guy he is, the other one was really for me to use.
So, he bought an Invictus to match with the Mak 50 he already had (that one was for me, thanks Bro!!), and then a whole other setup he found on… wait for it… BD classifieds! Where else?
An ATD 50T on some ridiculously heavy custom Calstar that Jaime had on assignment at Bob Sands. “Cow Killer,” I think was emblazoned on the rod… prophetic to say the least…
As noted in the first part of this report, I suck at remembering names… same with rod/reel types/models, etc. So, I just took a picture of his rod since I knew I’d forget the specifics:
Yeah, that’s some serious backbone on that rod…
Yet, as fortune would have it, the day broke bright and early and fishy and… those damn trashy marlin fish were still around and biting with abandon, and the other boats had one or none in the tuna department, and the chef’s kept cooking up delicious fare, and the big fish fire in most of our bellies did wane, and the morning grew long and longer with nary a tuna to show, and then the call for lunch… and our bellies did rumble and… well, choose your fare…
And thus did many of us succumb to the pull of baser instincts… to the pull of lunch…
But while many chose to dine or otherwise did fail to fish a bait, below us, unseen by most, unanticipated by many, but not entirely unnoticed by one… a behemoth did swim…
Battling the Doldrums in Super-Cow Latitudes
There’s a strange atmosphere that pervades one’s senses in the indeterminate time between mid-morning and early afternoon in a slow or non-existent bite… you’ve been doing the long soak for hours, it seems, heavy rod and reel growing ever heavier in your hands, line slowly spooling of the reel, beads of sweat finding their way down your face or neck, a general sense of lassitude settling in…
Fishing bass on the lakes decades ago, this was the time I’d tuck the biggest, baddest, meanest crawdad into one of my dad’s shoes (which he liked to pull off and leave on the deck while bait fishing), or replace his half-drunk Budweiser with a half-full can of lake water to see how long a gulp he’d take before he noticed it wasn’t beer – quite a lot, it turned out… fun times.
But on a trip where a tuna fish bigger than me is possible… well, at least one of us stayed focused and on point...
To be continued…
Nonetheless, as promised, here’s part two of the story.
Ruby Tuesday found us on the southern part of the Ridge… rhapsodizing on the dawn (AKA Aurora) is beginning to give way to worshipping the porcelain god – No! Not that one! The COFFEE CUP!! Yup, a steaming cup of Java is sometimes worthy of worship…
But pictures of coffee don’t really cut it… so…
(Yeah, yeah, I’m recycling a sunrise photo – see the first sentence…)
This portion of the report will have basically no pictures (Editors note: damn guy snuck a few in as you’ll see, probably for the better), but get your fill of photos in Part 1, there are a bunch there.
And at some point, an actual video of the trip will be posted by Marty (I’m just happy to get my report finished before the video! … well, almost at this point).
Anyway, we were back at it, chasing after a few bigger yellows. Amazing how those fish can rock you even on 100lb gear. Don’t ask me how I know. Still, we put a fair amount in the hold, but again, too many reds.
What to do, what to do? Well, drop in the trollers and pick up some ‘hoo! Not a whole heck of a lot, but we are just whetting our appetites for the wahoo-palooza to come in a few days.
Did a stop for some grouper and there were a few take downs, but none stuck. I believe one guy hooked a good one on a man bait, but it played the ol’ Queen anthem and rocked him. C’est la vie.
Eventually, word came down from on high, the word we were all waiting for – we’re headed to make bait! YES! We’re going to get some… uh… mackerel? No, wait…
Wait, that’s not it… we’re headed to make bait… and then steaming overnight to the land of the giants, Cowtown! Yeah, that word…
A'chunking we shall go
A'chunking we shall go
Hi ho the tuna-o
A'chunking we shall go...
Captain Mike made the decision – probably aided by the fact that there were already 2 or 3 boats plying the Potato Bank – to give the Lusitania Bank a go. We would make other moves in upcoming days due to the normal give-and-take of locations between the LR boats which paid off in big ways. While Lusitania didn’t quite fit that bill, it wasn’t like anyone was filling the RSW tanks with tuna at the Potato – a fish a day seemed to be the word.
Anyway, we woke up pre-dawn and started fishing. A couple guys hooked up almost immediately on BIG things! Unfortunately, they weren’t tuna. At least one was a thresher, the other probably another shark. Bummer.
As the sun rose and through the morning, more big fish started getting hooked. Again unfortunately, they were all those damn trash fish. Yep, striped marlin. Damn them! I’ll admit they are very cool to see – jumping, screaming 100 yards of line straight out, flashing colors – as long as all that is at the end of someone else’s rod. Somehow, I hooked three and managed to purposely pull the hook on all of them. Success! Gimme my gear back, I want a tuna… or, if no tuna, I’ll happily take…
Aurora!!!
OOOOPS!!! Sorry, Jason, don’t delete it, it’s ART my man! You left it the first time…I know I said no more pics but, c’mon, that’s a lot of words without any pictures.
We like pictures on BD. And we’ve seen a lot of damn fish and food porn, so… some art.
(If you haven’t read part one of this incredibly long-winded and delinquent {but really effin’ cool} fish report… I highly suggest you do so… you’ll get a lot of the references… and get to see Aurora again! – hot damn!! And a whole helluva lot of other photos)
Anyhoo, Aurora rocks. You know you like it…
Around mid-day, with no tuna for our efforts, we headed for the Potato.
As sometimes happens on these trips, we randomly came across a floating bonanza, I think it may have been a mattress. And floating mattresses, or anything else for that matter, can be just filthy with dorado. As was this one. The usual mayhem many of you are familiar with ensued… lines crossed, fish flying, deck covered… dodo’s here, dodo’s there, dodo’s everywhere.
Not being a huge fan of RSW crushed dorado filling up my freezer, I opted to toss out a hookless Rapala just for shits and giggles. I got a few grabs and tugs and then heard above the din and clamor of the wide-open bite, Captain Mike atop the bait well say, “Somebody should drop a bomb off the bow about 200 feet.”
Hmmmm… dorado or wahoo? You don’t have to tell me twice. I made a beeline for my wahoo jig rod, tied on one of those gray and pink Salas jigs, and dropped it straight down off the bow. Boom! First wind in, I’m bit!
Now, I’d not caught a wahoo before on anything but bait or trolling. But I read BD a lot... (eye-roll emoji in this spot)…
So… wind, Wind, WIND!!! Rod pointed at the fish, I wound Wound WOUND!. And in short order, a 35 pound wahoo was ready for the gaff. Noice! What do you know, kudos to the guys that tell you how to do shit on BD.
Funny aside – Shaun, who would get a decent tuna later on – caught the smallest wahoo on record, I’m pretty sure. If it didn’t have that cool wahoo striping, I’d have sworn he had a decent barracuda. In fact, it wasn’t a wahoo at all – it was a WEE-hoo. Little bitty thing, I tell you. Literally. His chagrin was short lived, though, because… it was a REALLY decent tuna he would soon catch.
With the blood lust sated, Mike called an end to the dodo-mania. We pulled the hook, dropped a marker on that mattress for other boats, and headed to the Potato Parking Lot.
Mid-afternoon we settled in a few hundred yards from the Vagabond and one or two other boats, can’t recall who at this point in time. The names would change overnight, but still 3 of us at least through the following day. I swear, those damn marlin followed us, though, and that would be all we hooked for that afternoon. Trash fish, I tell you, trash fish…
Mike told us that if we landed 3 or 4 good tuna the following day – December 1st – we’d give Cowtown a second day. But the skinny from the other boats was not promising – one fish for one boat, none, I think for one or two others.
Nonetheless, we settled in with high hopes and much determination for the following day, having rigged the heavy gear for chunking and the slightly less heavy gear for fly-lining, and enjoyed a fine repast and various libations, then nestled snug in our beds, with visions of super-cows dancing in our heads…
You Say “Potato,” Shaun says “Hi Ho the Super Cow OH!”
Yeah, so, one thing about my friend Shaun… he gets his mind set on something and he’s all in… I mean, like, ALL IN.
I did my first LR trip in 2017 – a solo 7-day trip on the Searcher, Capt. Art at the helm (great guy, love that boat!). A bunch of guys at work were real interested in this “new” type of fishing (Alaska guys, halibut and salmon being their norm), but when I told Shaun about my trip, he was onboard in a heartbeat. Boom! We were booked on the Vagabond for a 7-day the next fall in short order. Gotta love that kind of commitment…
So we did seven days for a couple years, then 10-day trips the past two years, then… well, a 12-day trip, with a day or two to target the bigguns… because, why not???
Anyway, Shaun went sort of bonkers, buying the heavy gear, his heart set on a big fish… no, a BIG fish, and wound up buying not one, but two real heavy setups. Ostensibly, one for backup, but being the kind of guy he is, the other one was really for me to use.
So, he bought an Invictus to match with the Mak 50 he already had (that one was for me, thanks Bro!!), and then a whole other setup he found on… wait for it… BD classifieds! Where else?
An ATD 50T on some ridiculously heavy custom Calstar that Jaime had on assignment at Bob Sands. “Cow Killer,” I think was emblazoned on the rod… prophetic to say the least…
As noted in the first part of this report, I suck at remembering names… same with rod/reel types/models, etc. So, I just took a picture of his rod since I knew I’d forget the specifics:
Yeah, that’s some serious backbone on that rod…
Yet, as fortune would have it, the day broke bright and early and fishy and… those damn trashy marlin fish were still around and biting with abandon, and the other boats had one or none in the tuna department, and the chef’s kept cooking up delicious fare, and the big fish fire in most of our bellies did wane, and the morning grew long and longer with nary a tuna to show, and then the call for lunch… and our bellies did rumble and… well, choose your fare…
And thus did many of us succumb to the pull of baser instincts… to the pull of lunch…
But while many chose to dine or otherwise did fail to fish a bait, below us, unseen by most, unanticipated by many, but not entirely unnoticed by one… a behemoth did swim…
Battling the Doldrums in Super-Cow Latitudes
There’s a strange atmosphere that pervades one’s senses in the indeterminate time between mid-morning and early afternoon in a slow or non-existent bite… you’ve been doing the long soak for hours, it seems, heavy rod and reel growing ever heavier in your hands, line slowly spooling of the reel, beads of sweat finding their way down your face or neck, a general sense of lassitude settling in…
Fishing bass on the lakes decades ago, this was the time I’d tuck the biggest, baddest, meanest crawdad into one of my dad’s shoes (which he liked to pull off and leave on the deck while bait fishing), or replace his half-drunk Budweiser with a half-full can of lake water to see how long a gulp he’d take before he noticed it wasn’t beer – quite a lot, it turned out… fun times.
But on a trip where a tuna fish bigger than me is possible… well, at least one of us stayed focused and on point...
“It was the first of December
A day he’ll always remember,
- Yes, he will -
'Cause that was the day...
...His super-cow died…”
A day he’ll always remember,
- Yes, he will -
'Cause that was the day...
...His super-cow died…”
To be continued…
