With my Sunday almost done, I realized the weather was down and I still had some daylight left. So, I hooked up the trailer and took the boat out for another run on the engine. Fishing was a bonus the went with a blind jig strike on a Dorado.
North 9
I still can’t believe that the are this many fish on the 9 mile bank. The water has been great all year and people have been pulling a lot of good fish from Dorado to Yellowfin to Yellowtail (we hooked a marlin last week) on the 9. As it has been doing for the past month or so, super nice water started about 5 miles out with moderate life.
I left the house around 2:30 and was heading out the channel around 3:30. Ran into porpoise at about 7 miles that looked good. I metered some life down deep, but what ever it was, it didn’t want to come play. As I crossed over the north end of the bank, there were some whales and a fair amount of bird life. I did a little trolling for nothing then moved to the west side. Again I started to see bird and dolphins. I started to troll down the edge of the bank and ended up with a blind jig strike for a nice female Dorado about 15 pounds.
The strike wasn’t what I expected. I had the cedar plug on the Diawa 50 on the port out roder. I heard a thump and turned to see the rod in the water only being held by the bungee chord. I grabbed it and started to reel. The do-do quickly jumped and I knew I both had a fish and was very luck to not lose the rod. For some reason the drag didn’t let go which caused the whole rod holder to pivot in the main holder. I think something broke inside of it. This let the out out roder pivot striat back and the rod flew out.
Then my lack of gaff skills kicked in. I made to good pulls at the fish with no luck. Then, remembering I had 150# leader for the cedar plug, I just bounced the fish in. It hit the deck and the hook popped out. Again; luck.
Catch
1 nice female dorado about 15 pounds.
Conditions
Water
Monsoon conditions prevailed across San Diego all weekend, so it was warm and muggy. There was a slight southerly flow, but very little swell. The 6-9 knots of breeze gave a light chop, but nothing too bad.
"WIND WAVES 2 FT OR LESS. MIXED SWELL W 1 FT AT 11 SECONDS AND SW 3 FT AT 11 SECONDS."
Water temp ranged from 72-74 and it was super blue.
Tide
Tides didn’t seem to be too strong offshore. Water was calm and well behaved.
Weather
75 and humid was the theme for the day. The skies were pretty overcast.
Notes
This was the second run since I noticed the oil issues on the engine. I did a little trolling and the oil seems ok from my night time check. I will look again in the day light. Now I think that it is much more likely that the oil issue was condensation and blow-back from the hard trolling at 33 hundred RPM. Trolling at 22-26 hundred seems much better.
Fuel Burn: 17.2 Gallons
Distance: 51.6 nautical miles
Hours: 740.5
Fuel Fill: 17.043 gallons