Oct. 5, 2011 – More Big Blue Marlin and Ahi!

While I was weighing our three ahis from the day before I met four guys from California who were interested in ahi fishing.  After answering a few questions they decided to book a full day and fish with me.  We decided to leave early in the morning and look for the porpoise school.  James, Mark, Brian and Ron met me at my slip at 6am.  We ran south for a while and then set up 5 rods and started trolling.  It wasn’t long before I had a mark on my sounder at 25 fathoms.  I turned to look back at the pattern and a nice blue marlin stuck it’s dorsal up behind the short rigger lure.  Ron was upstairs with me and we both watched as the blue inhaled the lure.  Brian was first up and strapped into the chair.  The fish didn’t show itself until it was about 200yards from the boat.  She put on a great show and jumped about 10 times going away.  We were at a half spool of line, roughly 400 yards of line out before she stopped.  Brian bore down and got to work and brought the fish to leader in about 35 minutes.  It was his first blue marlin and it was a great one to start off with!  I removed the hook and let her swim off.  I estimated her at 450lbs!  We continued down the coast and found the porpoise school.  It was a big pile with plenty of birds working the front of the pile.  We went right to the greenstick.  I marked several fishi in the pile and saw several more feeding on the surface.  Our first hour in the school and no bite.  The school came together a little bit more and on our next pass a big ahi exploded out of the water and ate one of the squids.  Ron was up and buckled into the harness.  The ahi fought deep and Ron was able to finally get the leader to me in about 15 minutes.  His first ever ahi weighed 165lbs!  After packing the fish in ice, we headed back to the school which had spread out making it harder to locate the fish.  We set up again and on our next pass had a nice skipjack tuna eat another squid.  James pulled in our last fish of the day that went 26lbs!