Report by, Jayson Quimby
Tuesday evening, on the way down to get on board the Pride for our first overnight charter of the year, I received a call from the owner, Greg Gawitt, and he informed me that they were having some problems with the Pride, so he was putting us on the Aztec. This was definitely an upgrade as it is a much bigger boat, and the sleeping accommodations were very nice. 16 FIB’ers loaded the AZTEC and reports of excellent fishing that day got everyone excited!! The crew took their time loading cured Sardines, Macs, and Achovies into the tanks, and the captain informed us that the fish were as close as 16 miles from Mission Bay! He went over how we should rig up, and told us we should definitely try Shimano’s Flat Fall Butterfly jigs. We woke up at 5:15 to lumpy conditions, and a few people were not feeling their best because of it – it was a little windy and the close interval mixed swells had the boat rocking. We stopped on a sonar school of fish, and Art Gomez was the first one to land a fish- a 32.12 pound Bluefin Tuna
We only hooked that one fish, so we dropped the trolling rigs in and started looking for more fish. Gilbert Acosta, Jim Keich, and David Weeks were able to stop the boat a few times with their Cedar Plugs, but the fish just didn’t seem to want to eat the other baits with hooks in them. Many times the captain would stop on sonar schools, and on breezers, and the crew would throw a lot of chum, but the fish just seemed to be on a different program. Floyd Spangler was able to land two nice YFT on the Shimano Flat Fall jig, and since Art was not in the Jackpot, Floyd’s 25.12 pound YFT took top honors
It was a joy to watch Ken Kunkle and his grandson Jack Vander Yacht fishing together. Jack was able to wrangle this beautiful 19.13 Pound YFT to the boat!
Also catching a nice 20 pound class YFT was Bernie Clayton
We had many stops on sonar schools, and breezing fish throughout the day, but all we could muster was the 8 fish: 1-BFT and 7-YFT. Thankfully, the weather smoothed out as the day wore on, but the bite just never got going for us. The crew worked very hard, traveled over 80 miles searching back and forth for the right school of fish, and we kept fishing hard until after 7PM. We tried it all, from 40# all the way down to 20# Fluro. We tried Macs, Sardines, and Anchovies all hooked in 101 different ways, and with really small hooks. We tried many types of lures too. Unfortunately, most of us just never got the bites we were looking for, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying!
Everyone unloaded with a smile, and a thankful heart. Thankful for another beautiful and safe day on the water, and thankful for being able to spend it on a great boat with a hard-working crew, and with our FIB’er friends.