Although the weather forecast looked good on paper, reality was a whole new ball game. We were met with a reasonable swell from the South and East with an unreasonable current from the North as well as the occasional squall generated by the rain all together making for a terribly unreasonable sea; very short and steep.

The guys did well to stay out and though we didn’t get the whole day in went home with a good feed of Mahi Mahi.

It was a shame we didn’t make it to the wide grounds since even at the 12 Mile the sea temperature was 24 degrees.

I went out again yesterday, fortunately sea and wind had abated considerably however it was still fairly uncomfortable. We put in a shot for Kings at the Peak without doing any good so moved out to the FAD. There was at least a 1.5 knot current from the North running past the FAD but conditions weren’t bad and we caught several Mahi Mahi in the 80 to 90 cm. range.

Now it was time to at last go wide. The lures were put in straight away since Jamie from ‘Carnage’ had dropped a Striped Marlin in eighty fathoms the day before and we trolled out to Browns where there were a couple of boats fishing the bottom. We trolled a Striped tuna lure and caught a couple but sadly that was all.

I trolled out to a thousand fathoms without seeing much at, only the occasional Gannet and Albatross. But then as luck would have it out of the blue the Brad’J took off at a thousand miles an hour stripping off over two hundred metres in seconds. Then the unthinkable…there are many ways to lose a fish. The angler thinking he could slow the fish down by putting applying more pressure went straight to sun-set…with the inevitable result.

Our first thought was that it had been a Blue Marlin but when we examined the line there was no sign of chafing so we surmise it may have been a good sized Yellowfin…sadly history now.

The water still looks fabulous out there and I feel there is a lot left of this incredibly bad season…but then again you’ve got to be optimistic.

Tight lines,

Ivan