Iced up at Mills on Thursday evening. Decided to give it a look on Friday despite some less than ideal weather. Left Port Desire at 0530, cleared the green can and set the autopilot for 48 36 over 125 15. Seas were glass calm all the way to the outside of big bank. decided to keep on trucking. Began to pick up with the wind about 5 miles before our start point but the ride was still quite comfortable with the wind being SSE and us traveling west. Temp was 55 degrees when the water turned gin blue about a mile before our starting spot. temps rose fast to 58.5 and we deployed a spread of purple and black clones. The wind was howling by now and we couldn't troll west as i had planned so we turned north in an attempt to keep our lines straight. After a quick hit and miss on the starboard side outrigger, we spent the first 45 minutes untangling a barrage of birdsnests before coming to the conclusion that it was too windy to attemp even 5 lines. picked up the first fish right on a temp break at 60 degrees. Put it in the box and spent the next 15 minutes untangling/re-tieing the ensuing birdsnest that resulted from slowing down to boat the fish on 30lb line (10'6" mooching rod with Islander reel). Temps pulled back to 57 so we made an attempt to troll west. we shortened up the spread but still managed to somehow tangle the outrigger lines together after coming over a wave. As we were dealing with that mess, we nailed the second and last Longfin of the day. after boating it and looking at 4 rods to be retied, the despair in the crews eyes was evident so we pulled in the outriggers and headed east at 10:00 am. Took us two hours to get to the big bank as we plowed through some really nasty chop. When we started heading in, we had planned on stopping at the bank, if the weather was better, to put some cold water species in the box but, although better, it just wasnt meant to be. We continued East towards Bamfield and finally started to make some time around the 10 mile mark. Running 4 hours is those kind of conditions take a lot out of you phisically so we were exhausted and headed straight in for fuel and clean-up. Rolled in to Bamfield Harbour at 1400 with two of the most expensive 18lb Tuna you will ever eat!
I must say we did learn a few things on this trip, one thing is that it is nearly impossible to troll a spread like that in high winds, the wind just blows the lines around in the water far more than I was expecting. I figured the hard part of the day would be getting in and out in those conditions but to be honest, with the small swells and the cross wind, although brutally rough and slow trip in, it was not a dangerous sea state. The big issue was trying to fish in those breaking wind waves getting thrown around in the boat. Just because you can make it there and back, definitely doesn't make it worth fishing. Doesn't really matter at that point how big of boat you have I don't think.
I think the fish were definitely there at Loudoun, if we could have presented a nice spread for a decent amount of time I am sure we would have killed em!
Good luck to those that fish today. Conditions look far superior.
Cheers,
P.S. No pics, just to rough out there and forgot when we got back to Bam.