It was a very humbling experience this past Friday and Saturday. Firelight, Jeffy, and myself were loaded for bear with tons of fuel and ice for 2 days of tuna fishing. I have never had a skunk trip tuna fishing until now. I guess it was due to happen. Thursday was hard deciding where to go with all the information to digest. We decided to go to the best shot from terrafin which was right around the ammo dump West of the Clayquot Canyon.
We started off on Friday morning with a flat trailer tire on the way to Ukee. Finally got that dealt with and off to a late start. We pounded our way up to the ammo dump averaging 20 mph the whole way. It's a long run from Ukee. We hit the temp break and the water was gin blue clear as well. We thought game on!. We radioed boats but the only other boat out there was a commercial boat. We talked a bit on the radio and they hadn't had a tuna bite all morning!!!. They only thing they hooked was a Steel head lol (apparently this happens time to time). There was very little sign of life out there. Very few birds, no bait on the screen, and only 1 small pod of porpoises. We trolled for around 4 or 5 hours with out a single hit. Headed back in and refueled.
Saturday morning we launched at Toquart. We thought there would be some boats down at the Barkley and we could spread out and try to find the elusive long fins. Well we got out there and everyone except Trophyhunter went up to the ammo dump lol. There was only one good patch down there that was 80 miles off the beach and right next to the border. We made it down there quite quickly as the seas were very nice. The wild life down there was amazing. We saw 2 pods of orcas, tons of bait on the screen, tons and tons of birds, and probably passed 50 humpbacks!!!. We hit the temp break as the temp jumped from about 56 to 59 in about a mile. The water wasn't blue blue but was clear. We were just about to radio TH and drop the lines when my low oil alarm went off. I miscalculated the oil burn due to the first hour of the trip being able to do 32 mph. We had 4 liters on board and put that in but had to bleed the air out of the small tank on the motor. I was back on the swim grid with the cover off bleeding the air out of the motor tank. Thank god the seas were nice as this would have been very difficult to do otherwise. We decided to not risk fishing and headed all the way back keeping it at 3800 rpm to nurse the oil. We radioed TH and told him our situation. He said he had 4 litres of oil on board if we needed it. Nice to know and thanks again TH. We made it back to Ukee with less than a liter left. Good call. Note to self: bring lots of oil!!!.
We stopped for a few minutes on the way in and Jeff caught a nice ling. Pretty expensive ling lol. So total for the 2 trips was about 750 in fuel and oil, 105 in ice (Jeffs ling won't spoil ha ha), and 100 bucks for a new trailer tire. That's fishing and I think I have said it before...........this is an expensive fishery. Still had a good time with good company in 2 days of amazing weather out there. Its nice having a couple of guys on board that are handy and intuitive. It makes things go better and gives you a better felling knowing they can deal with problems if you get into a pickle out there.
I think the long fins will show back up and I am looking forward to the nice weather for the start of the shootout!!!
We are staying at the beam and will be talking to some of you folks on Friday. Oh yeah, with swim baits and chunk bait in hand
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Cheers,
John