Had Scott A, Brian A, and Phil H aboard for an open trip today. Originally it was supposed to be a fluke trip, but with poor results over the weekend and the stellar seabass fishing in our area, the crew opted to pull on biscuits for part of the day then finish fluking.
Fished S and E again on snags in 60-75' of water. First drop was where we left them on Saturday. As soon as I pulled up onto the piece the screen lit up - seabass were so thick on the machine that they appeared like bunker pods tight to the bottom. We dropped the rigs down, and had immediate lock & load action. We had a good, slow drift (.2-.4) initially for the first 2 hours, so we were able to work the area and beat up on the bass. There were some spots where the seabass were read thick on the open bottom, away from the piece.
On the drift, we put about 60 keepers in the box off this piece, as well as a would-be 17" keeper blackfish and a small cod, both taken by Brian. We then bounced around - hit a wreck, a couple other rockpiles, and pulled a few keepers off each.
By 11, we went back to where we started, and dropped the hook. We had a dead-on wind against tide, but with the south wind getting a bit snappy we were able to sit pretty well right on the piece, albeit a bit cock-eyed, with a slow swing. For the next 2 1/2 hours, we beat on the seabass with double and triple headers coming up every few minutes, it was simply stupid fishing, until we pulled anchor at 1:30 and did a few drifts for fluke.
While fluking we only put 1 fish in the boat, which was a nice 20" keeper taken by Scott on a mai-tai jig.
On the day we boxed exactly 100 seabass to 2.5# (most fish were 13-15" -- no hogs for us today), while boating probably twice that, with many right around 12" going back healthy, as well as the short cod, 1 tog, 2 ling and the 1 keeper fluke.
It was another great day of bottom fishing with a great crew!!!
(Back to flukin' on weds/friday - possibly mixing in some seabassin' - we have room on Weds if interested)
