August 1st 2020

Originally called this trip off on Thursday. However the weather started to improve. I made the final call at 5:30am to go. On such short notice it was just Gina, Chris and I. We pushed off at 8am and about 20 minutes later we found ourselves in a lake like ocean. We cruised out at 31kts. We were about 3 miles short of my yellowfin numbers when we came across a fleet of about 20 boats. Boats were jigging and trolling among a bunch of whales and dolphins. We stayed away and hooked up with our first fish. Out of nowhere a whale pops up and runs into our line. Good bye tuna, good bye Sterling wide tracker. I quickly tied on a smaller wide tracker and within 5 minutes we were hooked up again. With Chris on the rod it was time for Gina to leader her first fish. She did a great job while I gaffed the fish. We broke the ice but that would be it for the next two hours. I decided to break from the fleet and finally get to my numbers. We roll into tons of life. The sweet smell of tuna feeding below us confirms their presence. Within minutes we are back in the game. After a 20 minute fight our second yft hits the deck. This was a nice fish. At 4pm things started to get silly. We found a pod of dolphin that was holding tuna. Every time we went through them we hooked up. After a while we were only trolling three lines. We left at 6:15pm and arrived home just as it went pitch dark.  This was a great day that almost didn't happen.

If you blow up the screen shot under the photo of Chris. You will see a long line on the side-vision. That's a whale that was swimming next to us and I have never prayed so hard for him to dive deeper. The three of us just watched in silence. Thankfully the big beast went deep.