Made plans to pull from the dock at first light and steam towards triple wreck area with a crew of Myself, SeaChelle and DoorMatt.
Stopped short of the Corvallis with bait on the surface. Got gear out, set up and bait was gone, couldn't find them again, so continued on to Corvallis.
Stopped just shy of corvallis and threw the trolling gear out. nothing in the area, continued to troll to some lumps a couple miles away. Nothing there, and these where some pretty nice sized raises off the seabed. Pulled the gear back in and shot out to the 30 line.
Got to the 30 line and decided to troll south. Sporadic surface bait here and there as long as you stayed right on the 30 line. No marks on the sounder anywhere.
Trolled for about 15 miles, mid point a mahi smashed a rainbow spreader bar but we couldn't commit and lost it at the stern. Circled the area and hooked up another mahi on a blue/white islander wwb. This one made it into the box. Both where nice gaffer mahi, and pretty arial.
Kept hearing others on radio doing good somewhere,, with lack of marks we packed in the gear for a 25 mile trip north towards Chicken Canyon area.
Arrived to the CC with a small fleet trolling around with not much action. Moved onto another small fleet more west, and kept that up till we found life.
Wound up in the AP area with tuna so thick on the surface, they looked like a bunker school,,, 1000's of them in a school and a few schools within sight, and plenty of bait down deep.
Running along the edge of the schools looking down into the water and you could see hundreds of them swim right under you.
Heard of the schools being fairly tight lipped, so I just started circling the schools and doing a figure eight between them.
Passed over a very large school of rays and the rainbow bar goes off, fish on I hope,,, and not a ray. They where big enough to worry about being spooled.
With a few minute fight, DoorMatt had it at the back of the boat, looked to be 30" or so. Turned to grab the gaff, spun back around and it was gone. Darn!
Gear back out and continued to circle. Within five minutes The green machine in the wash goes off,, fish on! SeaChelle steps up and puts a hurting on the tuna, had it to the boat in 10 minutes there about. See its a nice gaffer and while trying to leader and gaff the fish at the same time, I sank the gaff, little sucker went crazy and yanked the gaff right out of my hand. Was able to grab it in the water before it got to far away and with a second swing it was laying on the deck. Nice 36" fish bleed and put on ice.
Circled around and tried jigging for another hour or so and headed home happy.