Monster Hunting Last Night

[DOGHOUSE26]

My son Chris and I took the DOGHOUSE out last night for a little squidding last night 5 miles straight out from the jetty, beautiful flat calm gorgous night until we brought up the Humbolts in large quanities! These things are huge! My first was the biggest maybe 30#plus; the other 5 or so we kept were 20-25 easy; we released 15 or so others. It was full speed after bringing the gang up from 550' to about 50-75' where they would hang out and attack anything lowered down to them. The best rig was a 8" squid jig on 60# leader with a 12-16oz torpedo 24" below it to get it down fast. The next best was a Salas 6X heavy in white glow or blue/white glow(this worked well when they were 50-75' down.) I don't know if I had one on the jig and one on the sinker or just one hell of a demon, I snapped it off on 60#! We tried the traditional size squid jigs which got inhaled but the barbs don't get enough solid meat and you end up tearing off the tentacles when they run and then you get bit again and you can never get up to the surface with a squid on the jig, you just crank forever! No mess in the boat either, put a 100 qt cooler in the back corner and gaff behind the head and drop into the cooler - no squirters!

I'll post pics from the cleaning table tonight, after dropping my camera in the drink last summer I still can't understand why my daughter wouldn't let me take her's last night.



And this was the SMALLEST one!

[KingFish]

Nice catch. Did you use a squid light or were the deck lights enough to bring them up?

[NoSlack]

Did you use lights or just bring the school up with a hooked squid?

My dad got in town over the weekend and would like to get out and catch something.

We are shooting for Wednesday night if the weather holds.

Mike

[DOGHOUSE26]

We had 2-500W Halogens, one off each side. I'm not sure if the lights are mandatory; we first one we hooked was 20' off the bottom @ 600' and I think their buddies follow them up to about 50-75' below the boat. I think they would do that anyway, they took bites out of the hooked ones on the way up. You will feel them bite when your line goes slack and they will pull out some drag; too tight and you can feel the jig ripping through the tenticles! If they fall off just free fall again until slack, you're bit again! It's like reeling in a 5 gallon bucket from 500' deep (or 500' behind the boat if your crew are a bunch of trolling wise asses!)

[hijole]

How deep was the thing behind the squid?

[DOGHOUSE26]

Hijole,

Are you talking about the luv thing behind the squid?

[yellowfin1]

Doghouse,

Thanks for the hot tip on the squid. After reading your post yesterday I just had to give it a try. Left MB about 7:00 PM last night and headed straight out to 600' of water. I had the deck lights on and the stern light also. Dropped jigs to the bottom several times and worked them through the column with no luck. Moved over to several boats which were squidding over a high spot (went from 600' to 450') and they were nailing the squid. Dropped the jigs down again with no luck. Tried several types of jigs with still no luck. Meanwhile the boat 50' from us was hooting and hollering every 2 minutes and I could see buckets of water shooting up at them as they pulled these large creatures toward the boat. Yes they were running a generator with some fairly strong lights pointing down into the water. So I think it's safe to say that the lights are a must.

Scott

[DOGHOUSE26]

If you catch'em, be sure to ice them down immediately in a cooler. My buddies went on the O'side Twilight Boat on Monday night($30 each), had 10 squid each cleaned by deckhands ($50) then they recleaned them at home and cut up for processing (2 Hours).
Cooked them Tuesday night and all had a hint on ammonia (probably do to hitting the deck hard and then dropped in a burlap sack over the engine room for 4+ hours)!

They took their own boats out tonight to give it a try (Priceless!)