Had Darren, Roger and Charlie today for sharking and bluefin tuna combo trip. Left SRI at 4:50 am and headed out into a W/NW wind against a SE swell. Not bad overall...just a bit of a confused sea for a while.
Set up on the drift and no runs, hits or errors for 5 hours...
Had a 23' boat with twin outboards come within 25 yards of my shark lines...blew the horn, yelled and the boat got closer. I did not know if the driver was stupid, drunk or just plain a fool. If they did not veer to port she would have crossed over two of my three shark lines...yes, it was that close. The first pic is that boat...it was much closer than when I took the pic. A few times she was not even looking forward while driving the boat. Unreal!!!
Went on the troll, had a one hit right away, nothing for another hour and then had a nice runoff which turned out to be a 35", 30 lb BFT which Roger caught. His 1st BFT ever!! One fast fish.
Went back to sharking in that area, all alone and two runoffs at 5:30 pm but no other hook ups.
We at least got some nice tuna steaks for grill and had fun ball busting all day.
I fished 40 to 48 miles E/SE of SRI...had 71.5 to 76.2. Blue/green waters. The BFT hit a plain old cedar plug trolled at 6.7 kts.
Thx
Joe T.