Had Mike Striffler, Al Durso, and Pat Luckey Sr. and Jr. aboard for today's FTYP trip.
Ran south, into a nice freshening SSW breeze when we hit the crack at around 6:45 this AM. Fished in and around the AC Reef all day long, leapfrogging piece to piece as we worked from N to S, then back S to N.
To start out, all 4 guys were bucktailing. First drift I tried with no drift sock, we were flying at 1.5kts, so the sock went right in. What resumed thereafter was an extremely slow, chinese water torture-like pick of a fluke here, and a fluke there every 15 or so minutes. Good thing was that a good amount of the fluke that were coming up were over 18".
We did this all morning long, then by around 11AM, the S wind really started to crank, seas got kicked up, and everyone was forced to drag bait with the extremely fast drift. We still continued our extremely slow pick, with a flurry of a couple here and a couple there occurring maybe 3 times throughout the afternoon.
Called it a day at 3PM or so, wound up boating about 20-25 fluke, 9 of which were keepers, big one went to Pat Sr. with a nice 23"/4.5# flattie. Also boxed 3 ling, and 1 nice seabass. A lot of the fluke were very slender, and THIN, I think the only fat one we got was the larger one Pat took.
Overall a very tough day, but we pieced together a solid catch...Definitely a testament to having 4 extremely skilled anglers on the boat!
