March 30, 2012 – Fisher Gets Lucky, Again!

Today my charter cancelled on me.  It happens maybe once or twice a year and since I had already fueled up and loaded ice, I decided to go anyway.  My son Fisher is 13 and deckhands for me on Fridays as part of his school’s mentorship program.  I wish I had a mentorship program at my school when I was growing up so I could fish on Fridays!  Fisher by-the-way is one of the luckiest kids I know when it comes to fishing.  We ALWAYS catch something when he’s on board!  We left the harbor early around 6am and headed north.  The water was getting a little choppy so we decided to work our way back south in search of porpoise.  We’ve been doing really good on the big ahi the last few days and the school had been holding a lot of fish.  It didn’t take long before we spotted a lone frigate bird working bait scared to the surface by hungry porpoise and hopefully fedding ahi.  The porpoise were spread out for about a mile and on our first pass I marked a fish at 35 fathoms.  I pointed it out to Fisher and we both turned to watch the lures.  The short rigger fired off as a nice ahi inhaled the lure.  Fisher got into the chair as I brought the rod over to him.  He quickly had our first 100lb ahi to leader but it appeared to be snagged in the belly.  As I reached out for the leader the fish came off and we both watched in disgust as it righted itself and swam into the blue.  We quickly set up again and continued to troll.  Two other boats arrived and worked the school with us.  I looked at my sounder and saw two nice marks at 45 fathoms and again Fisher and I turned to watch the spread.  This time the fish were really aggressive and came in on the short bait and the long corner.  Both those lures run well inside the whitewater of the boat’s wash..  Unfortunately, the one of the long corner came off but Fisher was still fighting the one on the short bait.  He landed our first ahi to the boat in about 15 minutes – 139lb-er!  More boats had shown up and none of them had a trolling bite so we decided to change our strategy and go to the greenstick.  On our 5th pass I saw a fish shallow on the sounder.  I jigged the squids and watched as another big ahi came skyrocketing out of the water with one of our squids in it’s mouth.  Fisher got in the chair and got to work on our third bite if the day.  He had our second ahi to leader in about 20 minutes and this fish went 146lbs!  I got the fish packed in ice and off we went to the front of the school for another ahi.  By now there were eight boats fishing the pile and only one other ahi had been caught by another boat.  We worked the school for a few more hours and the fish just wouldn’t bite.  I told Fisher, “Last pass and we are out of here”.  I continued on as another boat crossed in front of us.  We were just to the outside section of the porpoise when a really nice ahi exploded on the squid closest to the boat!  Fisher came running out of the head just in time to see the bite.  This was a bigger fish and Fisher chose to fight this one out of the gunnel instead of the chair.  He did a great job and landed his biggest ahi yet in about 15 minutes.  Our last ahi of the day weighed 177lbs!  We called it a day and made it back to the harbor before 2pm with three big ahi!  Too bad our charter cancelled!  I think they really missed out!