Washington6/26, big fish were late!

[ultangler]

We went to the Washington on Bella Wood's initial oceanic run in the hopes of finding the reported weedline with mahi, bills & yellowfin, to no avail--the wind either busted it up or pushed it out. Hooked a small mahi early, then trolled for hours without a bite or a decent sign of life. Time to switch gears--got out the deep drop tackle and sent squid to the bottom in 720' of water. The first fish was a small one--black-belly rosie:
Attachment 9333
It improved, as John Unkart (author of Offshore Pursuit) picked up this nice tilefish, and moments later, JP Howard's rod bent down with tile #2.
Attachment 9334
JP caught the third one, too, which was the whopper of the day at 44-lbs.
Attachment 9335
After hand-cranking these guys up (along with the 3-lbs of lead needed to hold bottom in the slop) we turned tail and headed for home. All in all it was a rather difficult day between the tough seas and slow troll, but we were happy to head for home with some sweet meat in the cooler!!! All tiles hit squid on 10/0 circles, dead on bottom, between 720' and 750'; he mahi hit a hoo on a BW Islander.

[Rebel]

Way to scrap out some meat on an otherwise slow day. That's a beautiful tile!!!

Ed

[torquetowers]

Beautiful day if you ask me, nice to know there in the washington as well.

Did you find them on the bottom with the sounder or did you just see some nice bottom on the chart? thanks

[PlaynHooky]

Looks like you guys were doing some rocking out there!!! Way to be versatile and put em in the boat!!!

[ultangler]

Hey Torque - we have a set of "guard 'em with your life" numbers, which we started at. Interestingly, there fish were not exactly on them; the bottom bite was strange and right on the numbers they didn't hit (though in past trips we've done very well on them.) Still, it gave us our starting point (in 720') and the fish hit near by (750').