Aug. 17
Today almost went as planned except for the lack of yellowfin. We were supposed to scratch pretty good at the yellowfin in the morning, like 40 or so and then get on that big bluefin, and then scratch out another 30 or so yellowfin in the evening. Well we did the middle part but the numbers were lower on the sides. We saw plenty of that yellowfin, it just didn't bite well. On with the cool part. We found a mega school of that 70-100+ pound bluefin mid morning. It's been a long time since I've seen a mega school and every time I do I forget about the time before and I think it's the biggest school I've ever seen and that's how today was. Of course it didn't bite, but for me up in the wheel house where I can see it well it was incredible. Just the area of fish was monstrous, and when you add in all the shiners and thousands of black backs swimming through, it's amazing. We fished it for 4 hours on different attempts. On the first, the youngster Brendan hooked up and landed about an 80 pounder. On the second, his dad Scott hooked up and lost it and we hooked and lost another one. On the third, Scott hooked up again but this time he landed his 107 pounder. So far it's looking like we'll have a father- son jack pot. On the next few tries we got no reaction so we let it regroup for a while and a couple hours later we found it again and we hooked two more and lost them both and we missed a bite on the kite. We tried it one more time after that for no reaction before we left it for good. We're going to fish again tomorrow. We'll make a small move and relocate but as things are right now, we don't need much more yellowfin so we'll concentrate on the other kind of tuna.