Ive been running a few trips. It started out with an extremely rough day on friday. It was too choppy to get out where I wanted so I tried to cobia fish in 4-6 footers and it just wasnt going very well. We caught pretty much everything except for cobia. Redfish, redsnapper, mangroves, sharks, trout. But no cobia. luckily the guys were in for two days and the next day was forecast to be better. We got an early start and headed south with a bunch of chum. First stopm led to some blackfins early on before one of the guys managed to hook a stud yf on a popper. It was probably 150 plus and it definitly still has my popper in its mouth. I made another drift and this time a big boy yf came out. It also managed to pop the line. The next two werent so lucky. A good fish came out on sucked down a whole pogie and it was on. About 25 minutes later I stuck the gaff in a 161 pound yf. A couple of drifts later I hooked up on a bonito chunk and the fight was on again. This one came to the boat in about 20 minutes and weighed in at 130 at the dock. We made a couple more drifts but never saw another yf so we headed to the dock with two stud yfs and a handful of blacks.
The next two days I had Charles Johnson and crew along. The yfs definitly played a little hard to get. We piled on the big blackfins with 21 landed in two days at an average weight of 20 pounds. We only had one shot at a big yf and pulled the hook on a solid 170-180 class fish after 15 minutes on the fish.
On tuesday I had Jim Anders and his buddy Troy on the boat. We headed out to very calm conditions and made a few drifts with only blackfins in the boat. Then he showed up. The fish was hot in the chum and I pitched him a pogie and it was on Jim was strapped into the rod and it was his dream fish. About 30 minutes later his dream came true as I stuck the gaff in a 191 pound yf. We stuck around a little longer but Troy wasnt feeling so good and jim was whipped so they made the call to head to the house.
On wed night I had an overnighter. I headed out to some deep floaters and found no yf at all at night or in the evening. We jigged up blackfin the whole trip but I never saw a yf. We did get some excitement with a mako encounter. It came up eating on a blackfin and I got it hooked on with a 10 foot cable leader. After about a 20 minutes fight I think the fish wrapped him self up because the main line was broke right above the leader.
Offshore venice LA
