This past weekend we planned to make an offshore tuna fishing trip but struggled on where to go. There were no Yellowfin, Bluefin, or Wahoo reports anywhere. There had been a Big Eye bite after dark at the Wilmington but Thursday night there were 60 boats trolling in a football field size patch of water and all were skunked except the commercial boats with Japanese green sticks. Everyone else we knew was heading to the Wilmington because that was where the fish were caught last. We decided to go to the Lindenkohl instead because there were reports of large numbers of whales. We figured that if there were whales, there had to be big eye. 

 We were very lucky. As soon as we arrived we found a high flyer holding dolphin and got the skunk off the boat early with 10 Mahi. There were lots of whales spread out across the canyon but no big eye. We raised 5 white marlin and got bit off by a Wahoo but did not get anything to the boat all day. Finally about 5pm the whales gathered up into a tight school and we knew the big eye would be there. All the other boats left and there was only 12 of us left trolling. We hooked our first one at 8:30 pm and had him on the deck in 20 minutes.

We resumed trolling and had a second hit but it was a short strike and the line did not come tight. We chunked all night and finally hooked up at 4:30 am. After a very long fight we got it close enough to see with a spot light and it turned out to be a foul hooked Porpoise. That is the first time we have ever hooked a Porpoise. They are normally too smart to be hooked. The next morning we trolled for Big eye again. Two boats right next to us hooked up, but they did not call our number again. We also managed to lose a couple more white marlin….(obviously not marlin fisherman….yet)

 We had significant engine and driveline issues, loss of power and speed, oil burning and vibration but made it home in due time.  We had the boat hauled and found a freaking coat wrapped around our port prop.  Oh well it could have been a lot worse.

 The weather was fantastic and we caught enough fish to keep it interesting.

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