December 6, 2012 Big Ahi and Mahis For The Watson’s!

Debbie, John and their son Dan fished a full day on the Lepika!  Dan fishes quite a bit in Colorado and this was his first experience in the deep blue.  We ran far offshore in hopes of finding some nice current lines and trash that might be holding mahimahi.  As we worked our way farther out we ran into a few boats working a pod of porpoise.  The porpoise haven’t had much ahi in them so I wasn’t anticipating much action, but…you never know until you try!  We made a trolling pass with the lures and I didn’t see a single mark on the sounder.  I spoke to a guy on one of the other boats and he had not seen or caught a fish either.  I continued to work the pod and on my second pass I thought I might have marked a fish at 55fathoms, far to deep to get a bite on lures.  I turned to make my third pass and didn’t see the fish again on the screen.  It was a quick decsion but I decided to leave the pod and look farther offshore.  As I made my turn the short rigger came down hard and the Fin Nor 130 screamed as the ahi dove for the deep!  Debbie had asked me earlier, “how do you know when you get a bite?” and trust me…she knew!  Dan got in the chair and the ahi cleared almost half the spool by the time it stopped it’s first run!  He fought the fish hard for about 20 minutes before he got the leader to me.  At first glance I thought the fish would scale out at 140lbs but when we got to the scales it went 180lbs!  I ran back to the porpoise and looked on the sounder for more fish but didn’t see any other marks.  I continued farther south and ended up at one of the buoys that was holding some small tuna.  On my trolling pass I saw some small mahimahi cruising around so we went to live baiting.  The mahi were hard to catch but eventually we managed to catch one for each of them, perfect for a few nights worth of dinner!