I headed out with some friends in beautiful calm seas last week to see what we could find offshore.. obviously we wanted our bigeye but with the slower daytime bite we planned to mix in a few other options. We started out Mahi fishing targeting less pressured structure, and while we didnt find a huge pile there were some really nice fish around the boat. After dropping 2 heartbreakers at the boat one on a pulled hook and the other biting/chafing through our light tackle leader, we fed our last live snapper to a beautiful bull and after a crazy fight on the vs100 and light terez put a gaff in him. we also had a few chicken sized maui's and had to weed through a crazy amount of jacks which were fun to fight as well. On to the "mosh pit" bigeye spot we got lucky and put a 170lb class fish in the boat before it got too dark. we also dropped one after a brief hookup and lost another when a friendly boat decided to troll past 30 yards behind us and cut us off while the fish was up high. oh well that is the game right now for bigeyes they are piled up in small areas and everyone deserves their shot. pulling away from the crowd we set up a drift in the deep and quickly put a single yellowfin in the boat on the jig. we had 3 guys trying to catch a single live squid and after about an hour we finally got one. put him down and sure enough a really nice but manageable size swordfish found him a short time later. after a wild fight on 50lb standup we added our 4th species. most of the guys went down to sleep at that point but one intrepid soul stayed up and jigged and jigged and jigged. good thing because we got the yellowfins and skipjacks going wild under the boat from 330am until first light. all cookie cutter 50-65lb fish but what a bite it was. when the dust cleared we had 8 in the boat and lost probably that many to general yellowfin chaos
. during that time we hooked and immediately lost another swordfish that ate a sardine, jumped once, then dropped the bait. up on the troll in the morning we didnt see much so in the slick calm seas we hit the tilefish spot for an hour to spice up the box before running home. a trip to remember, life of all kinds out there right now. go get em
