December 28, 2011 – Last Ahi’s of 2011!

Jon, one of my past clients from Seattle referred Phillip, his wife and their friend Devin to fish with me on the Lepika.  Jon is a hardcore albacore fisherman and fished last year with me and caught a 168lb ahi.  The fishing has been really tough the last few days so the goal was to catch whatever was biting.  We started trolling right out front of the harbor since the tide was good first thing in the morning.  We headed out to the deep and lucked out right away.  A big splash on the horizon signaled porpoise and hopefully yellowfin tuna which travel with them.  I made a trolling pass in front of the pod without a bite nor did I see any fish on my sounder.  On our third pass I marked a fish at 35 fathoms but still not bites.  I cleared the lines and set out our greenstick in hopes of triggering a bite.  Other charter boats had arrived in the school as well but soon left since they too had no bites or marks on their screens.  We continued to work the school and I still didn’t see the fish I previously marked earlier.  Then, as I made a turn to make another pass an ahi exploded on one of the trailing squids!  Devin was first up and got settled into the fighting chair.  He was amazed at the power of these fish.  The others cheered him on as he got to work on the fish.  Devin worked hard and finally managed to land his first ever ahi which weighed 120lbs!  Since I only marked the one fish in the school we decided to go back to trolling.  As I was setting lines we saw another porpoise school a few miles away.  Again, I went right to the greenstick.  On our first pass we marked 3 ahi on the screen at 40 fathoms, but no bite.  On our second pass, an ahi blew up on one of the squids, leaving a big hole in the water, but missed the hooks.  I jigged the squids 2 more times and it came back and swallowed it.  Everyone got to see the bite as it leaped out of the water.  This time Phillip was up.  We buckled him into the chair and he started to work the fish up.  After about 20 minutes he too caught his first ahi that weighed 152lbs!  Unfortunately, one of them got a little seasick so we decided to call it a day and head in.  Either way, it was a great day and we were in by 12pm with two quality ahi!