yellowfin1
06-08-2006, 08:35 AM
First Paddy halfway between the 9 and 224 yielded all the smallish yellows you wanted. We kept a few (3-6 lb'ers) and released a few more. Left the paddy in search of bigger models. Next paddy just NE of the 224 produced more yellows which were a little bigger. Kept a few more and released some smaller ones. With several YT's in the boat we headed further west toward the E. BFLY looking for tuna. Heard a boat at 32'21N and 117'58W that reported a couple albies and we headed for those numbers. Big temperature break between those numbers and 2 miles west of those numbers (3+ degrees). At least 8 garage door size paddies also. More yellowtail on the paddies. Kept a few more which were a little bigger (8-12lbs) and released a bunch. They were really frenzying on the surface iron. Tons of fun watching them compete for the iron. Called in the Galaxy and they got limits of yellows. We trolled the area for a couple hours but never got the tuna we were looking for. One boat in the area did manage a double on 2 bluefin about 14lbs each. The warmer side of the break was up to 67.2 degrees and looked very fishy (birds, whales, boils, etc). The albies and bluefin were caught on the warm side of the break as well. One thing noticibly absent was the presence of bait on the paddies. Unlike last year when there was tons of bait on every paddy, we did not see any bait at all out there all day. Could have been the bait was hanging deep? When cleaning out the fish hold last night I found several 2.5 inch shrimp which the fish had spit up. The apparent lack of bait out there seemed to make the yellows very anxious to eat anything in the water. Ended up keeping 18 yellows between 3 and 12 lbs for 4 people. Release at least that many.
Scott
Scott