Head Hunter sun-mon sept 21-22

[John D.]

Bor and Mike Y joined me on this trip. Will make this quick as just got done vacuum sealing after 3 hours...Left sun at 8am and the troll only produced a single lft due to lots of weeds. Got an early start as we knew the winds were going to blow WNW at night. Decent heave but fair winds to start. At night, nothing going until at 12am I hooked up on the jig. Been fishing a Stella 20000sw and Black Hole 450g for years...it whips 80# class yft in 10 mins. This fish was kicking my a@@ for 20 mins. Couldn't put heat on him and budge it....30 ft from boat the jig pulled. My bad for having the drag too tight as the jig must have worked a hole in its mouth. Lesson learned. Now the winds picked up....big heave and white caps. :eek:

The crew battled all night jigging and bait fishing and just pounded away on the drift. Had a 2 hr stretch when it was hot but could only fight one or two fish at a time as the seas were sporty and the fish big and angry. Wound up going 12 for 24 or so, not up to standards but the action was constant and we worked hard. All good sized angry yft and dropped some really good fish. Love jigging something angry and big :D.

At first light, headed for the barn. 9 hour ride into the hammers of the NW. Not fun but still slept like a baby. Hard working group and met some good anglers in Peter and Bill...hope to fish with them again next year. The boat is a battleship, really well laid out and hard working Capt and mate.

Time to get out there...fish are there, big, and angry.

John

[Joey Dah Fish]

Way to go Jihn and guys. I so happy my trip got cancelled I couldn't take that kind of beating

[John D.]

The night wasn't awful, the ride in was lol

[Gerry Zagorski]

Way to hang tough and battle through it John.

[MrAC1980]

nice work John! Sent you a PM.

[NJ Dave]

Way to go Jihn and guys. I so happy my trip got cancelled I couldn't take that kind of beating

Same here. Got blown out for today/tomorrow. Probkem with fall fishing is the wind and storms. Oh well mama nature wins again.
Joey possible going out next Thur/Fri if you didnt redchedule yet.

[b_mac]

Good report. Tough conditions. Glad to see you caught them.

[John D.]

nice work John! Sent you a PM.

Anthony, I will put the reply to your PM here so it can help others. I was using a fancy butterfly type jig but with a single hook on the split ring. It was metallic sardine and shaped like a butter knife. 10 oz. Most of my hits were when the jig drops the shape causes it to flutter irregularly through the water column--like a wounded fish or darting squid. On one drop, I noticed the line wasn't coming off the spool with bail open---time to reel very fast :eek: when it came tight, as the fish was swimming towards the boat, I only had 40 ft of line out and bye bye favorite jig :(

Bill was just using the bread and butter hammered diamond jigs at 10oz. But all his hits were during a fast crank up from the depths--you don't usually get hit on the drop down with those jigs IMO.

Both types of jigs work well--you just have to fish each style a little differently. The most important thing is to also have someone jigging even when you don't see fish on the screen or being caught. Perseverance is key. The combo of chunking and jigging increases the catch dramatically and the jigging turns the fish onto the feed.

Good luck.

John