moore_rb
Stay Thirsty My Friends
This is a perfect example of how fickle the sport of fishing can be on 2 consecutive days.
We arrived in RP on Saturday evening; gassed up, launched, ate dinner, and turned in.
At 5am Sunday morning, we met Kim (Parrothead Pescador) at the Marina and ran to the end of Whale hill to catch some bait. I kept seeing these enormous arches on the fishfinder and thinking "those aren't bait school patterns, and I don't think hundreds of 5 foot grouper would be up in 30 foot deep water", and then they started surfacing- porpoises. Despite having "competition" on the bait stop we still managed to fill the bait tank with mackerel, bay bass, and small green jacks in about 30 minutes and headed out to investigate a new spot that I saw on a bathemetry chart that showed a huge dropoff to 40 fathoms north of Bird Island. That exercise turned out to be a lesson in how wrong the charts can be. We zigzagged over 20 square miles and all we found was 18 foot deep water and panga long-lines.
So, after giving up on that little side-project, we ran to the closest spot I had were I've had success before. After setting up on the drift, Kim drops and within 5 minutes he's hooked up. The fish is pulling drag and the pole is bobbing up and down so the rest of us all said "triggerfish" and went back to our business - well, Kim's triggerfish turned out to be about a 10 pound Gulf Grouper. Alright! that's how we like to recover after wasting 2 hours looking for phantom fishing holes.
We reset the boat for another drift on a parallel line and Trent's bait gets hammered. Another larger Gulf- about 50 pounds.
After that the tide started rolling in and the bite went cold, so we ran out to the 30 mile rock to see if the water was getting any bluer out there. We found great blue water, but limited weeds, and no surface action at all. Even though the tide was moving, there was no wind and flat seas so the drift was still relatively slow so we dropped on the rock and Kim managed to hook another grouper- this time it was a 10 pound Sardinero.
At this point it was sweltering, so we decided to get the boat moving to cool us off- so we ran over to the 20 south reef and found 81 degree water, and a beautiful current break with all kinds of sargassum and other junk floating on the break line, so we tied up the trolling rigs again and began dragging the outer edges, casting iron into the weeds as we went, but all we hit were 2 pound Bonito; no Dorado. I did find a new (to me at least) rocky drop off about 5 miles north of the 20 south reef that runs for about 3 miles east to west where the water goes from 185 on top to 225 on the bottom, so we drifted that ledge for a few hours and caught several tasty 18 inch Golden Drums, more Bonito, and some large spotted bay bass.
As the afternoon slack tide was approaching we ran back to the spot where we caught the first two grouper in the morning and Trent and I landed two identical Leopards- his on bait and mine on iron, and that ended Sunday. All in all a very nice day (heat not withstanding)
On Monday we met Dave Roberts at the boat at 5am planning to fish a route to Lobos, stopping on any points that fell along the way. As soon as we hit the bait stop we knew things were looking different- the sabikis were drawing blanks. we tried 3 other spots in front of Manny's and still found slim pickings, but we toughed it out and got about 20 baits into the tank.
We motored out to the 10 mile reef and dropped on a rock in 120 feet of water, but no one was home. We tried a couple other spots with identical non-results. The drift was running east to west, and Dave and I both said "Caballo". So up came the lines, and off we ran. Wouldn't you know it- when we got to Caballo the breeze was picking up and the drift had shifted to south/north, so we concentrated on the west end where the reef is widest but we still managed to donate about a metric ton worth of sinkers to the rocks. I farmed one heavy hit on a live bait but the fish managed to grab all bait and no hook- a free lunch.
By now it was nearing noon and I was not sure how long the run to Lobos was going to be, but I knew we wanted to get there well before the tide changed, and since the sun was killing us anyway we decided to run south and eat lunch along the way.
All the reefs that I had marks for down the coast had long lines set up on them- very frustrating to see that.
As we passed the point at Santo Tomas, the seas made a very significant change- we went from relatively calm to bouncy 3 footers.
We arrived in Lobos about 1:30pm and went to a bait spot to see if we could trade in our marginal bait for some high-quality mackaroni, but all we found were more jacks, and no macks.
We ran over to the first reef on our list, and I idled around for an hour searching for a sign of a dropoff that would mark the edge, but with the seas bouncing the boat up and down my bottom signal looked like a sine wave and all I could go by was the thickness of the bottom return. As I searched for rocks, Ed trolled a plug and stuck a pretty large Sierra.
Even with the seas bouncing us around, we had a decent 1mph south to north drift, so I took us all the way to the south end of the reef and set us up in 100 feet of water and we drifted for Grouper throughout the tide change, but I guess Doug, Scott, Ray and Connie had terrorized the fish too much on Saturday- no action was left for us. Trent did get one legitimate short strike and his bait check showed the tell tale scrapes of grouper teeth, and Ed boated a large Trigger on cut bait, but that was pretty much all she wrote, so at 7:30 we started securing the gear and getting ready for a long bumpy 80 mile ride back to Penasco. Fortunately, once we passed Sto Tomas, the seas again laid back down and I could crank it up to 38mph, and we arrived back at Safe Marina at exactly 10pm.
Despite registering a big 0 for 2 on Monday, it was still a very fun couple of days, and my SOC learning curve continues to improve....
Oh, did I mention how hot it was?
It was HOT.
I'l post some pics shortly.
We arrived in RP on Saturday evening; gassed up, launched, ate dinner, and turned in.
At 5am Sunday morning, we met Kim (Parrothead Pescador) at the Marina and ran to the end of Whale hill to catch some bait. I kept seeing these enormous arches on the fishfinder and thinking "those aren't bait school patterns, and I don't think hundreds of 5 foot grouper would be up in 30 foot deep water", and then they started surfacing- porpoises. Despite having "competition" on the bait stop we still managed to fill the bait tank with mackerel, bay bass, and small green jacks in about 30 minutes and headed out to investigate a new spot that I saw on a bathemetry chart that showed a huge dropoff to 40 fathoms north of Bird Island. That exercise turned out to be a lesson in how wrong the charts can be. We zigzagged over 20 square miles and all we found was 18 foot deep water and panga long-lines.
So, after giving up on that little side-project, we ran to the closest spot I had were I've had success before. After setting up on the drift, Kim drops and within 5 minutes he's hooked up. The fish is pulling drag and the pole is bobbing up and down so the rest of us all said "triggerfish" and went back to our business - well, Kim's triggerfish turned out to be about a 10 pound Gulf Grouper. Alright! that's how we like to recover after wasting 2 hours looking for phantom fishing holes.
We reset the boat for another drift on a parallel line and Trent's bait gets hammered. Another larger Gulf- about 50 pounds.
After that the tide started rolling in and the bite went cold, so we ran out to the 30 mile rock to see if the water was getting any bluer out there. We found great blue water, but limited weeds, and no surface action at all. Even though the tide was moving, there was no wind and flat seas so the drift was still relatively slow so we dropped on the rock and Kim managed to hook another grouper- this time it was a 10 pound Sardinero.
At this point it was sweltering, so we decided to get the boat moving to cool us off- so we ran over to the 20 south reef and found 81 degree water, and a beautiful current break with all kinds of sargassum and other junk floating on the break line, so we tied up the trolling rigs again and began dragging the outer edges, casting iron into the weeds as we went, but all we hit were 2 pound Bonito; no Dorado. I did find a new (to me at least) rocky drop off about 5 miles north of the 20 south reef that runs for about 3 miles east to west where the water goes from 185 on top to 225 on the bottom, so we drifted that ledge for a few hours and caught several tasty 18 inch Golden Drums, more Bonito, and some large spotted bay bass.
As the afternoon slack tide was approaching we ran back to the spot where we caught the first two grouper in the morning and Trent and I landed two identical Leopards- his on bait and mine on iron, and that ended Sunday. All in all a very nice day (heat not withstanding)
On Monday we met Dave Roberts at the boat at 5am planning to fish a route to Lobos, stopping on any points that fell along the way. As soon as we hit the bait stop we knew things were looking different- the sabikis were drawing blanks. we tried 3 other spots in front of Manny's and still found slim pickings, but we toughed it out and got about 20 baits into the tank.
We motored out to the 10 mile reef and dropped on a rock in 120 feet of water, but no one was home. We tried a couple other spots with identical non-results. The drift was running east to west, and Dave and I both said "Caballo". So up came the lines, and off we ran. Wouldn't you know it- when we got to Caballo the breeze was picking up and the drift had shifted to south/north, so we concentrated on the west end where the reef is widest but we still managed to donate about a metric ton worth of sinkers to the rocks. I farmed one heavy hit on a live bait but the fish managed to grab all bait and no hook- a free lunch.
By now it was nearing noon and I was not sure how long the run to Lobos was going to be, but I knew we wanted to get there well before the tide changed, and since the sun was killing us anyway we decided to run south and eat lunch along the way.
All the reefs that I had marks for down the coast had long lines set up on them- very frustrating to see that.
As we passed the point at Santo Tomas, the seas made a very significant change- we went from relatively calm to bouncy 3 footers.
We arrived in Lobos about 1:30pm and went to a bait spot to see if we could trade in our marginal bait for some high-quality mackaroni, but all we found were more jacks, and no macks.
We ran over to the first reef on our list, and I idled around for an hour searching for a sign of a dropoff that would mark the edge, but with the seas bouncing the boat up and down my bottom signal looked like a sine wave and all I could go by was the thickness of the bottom return. As I searched for rocks, Ed trolled a plug and stuck a pretty large Sierra.
Even with the seas bouncing us around, we had a decent 1mph south to north drift, so I took us all the way to the south end of the reef and set us up in 100 feet of water and we drifted for Grouper throughout the tide change, but I guess Doug, Scott, Ray and Connie had terrorized the fish too much on Saturday- no action was left for us. Trent did get one legitimate short strike and his bait check showed the tell tale scrapes of grouper teeth, and Ed boated a large Trigger on cut bait, but that was pretty much all she wrote, so at 7:30 we started securing the gear and getting ready for a long bumpy 80 mile ride back to Penasco. Fortunately, once we passed Sto Tomas, the seas again laid back down and I could crank it up to 38mph, and we arrived back at Safe Marina at exactly 10pm.
Despite registering a big 0 for 2 on Monday, it was still a very fun couple of days, and my SOC learning curve continues to improve....
Oh, did I mention how hot it was?
It was HOT.
I'l post some pics shortly.
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