2012 TUNA trips

Ill try and find a pic of the popper we were using, It was pretty kller watching them explode out of the water on those things. Just like a mini yellowfin tuna!
 
I saw a bunch of dolphins on Sunday's tuna trip but I think they were Pacific White-sided dolphins. They didn't have mottled colors like images I've see of Rosso's dolphins.
 
heres a great video of poppers being used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Ue-w-tMYc

they are basically plug / ***** shaped with a flat, concave face. They are a floating lure that you cast, best to use a spincasting reel for quick retrieve. Once your lure has hit the surface of the water, begin reeling hard, jerking every second or two, to get the lure to "Pop" (ie poppers) out of the water.

looking forward to the specific popper you were using mikep...
 
hey kelly its jay ya we were going to stay overnight but ran out of really estate and ice. we ended up burning 300L. when we saw the rissos dolphins we fished in between them for an hour and caught nada we left them then started hitting them hard again
 
Sst's and chloro's still look good. Friday's forecast looks decent. I'll be watching the weather like a hawk this week. My name is John and I'm a tuna addict. I'm going through withdrawls already ;).
 
Great read John, as always! Sounds like a pretty epic weekend and the Honda kept it pretty reasonable on fuel for you. I like how you brought the tuna to buddys house to be cleaned on the kitchen table! Must be a group of good ladz. Had a chuckle when I saw the GT4000 in the photo.

How far were the boats spread over the canyon? Did the group eventually hone in on one area more or less? And what tackle was working...very curious as to the finer details of this trip!

A few miles at the most I think from the radio talk. The area kept moving around and we would kind of all wonder over and start picking up fish again. Kinda following the school I guess. On Saturday Harper44 was killing them on all green. We were running zuccini and did not do as well. On Sunday we ran the zuccini's again and did well with them. Go figure lol. We did run one mexiflag feather on the starboard splash boat and it took 7 fish. It's more all green than the zuccini so I may pick up a quiver of them and some all green's.

How big is your ship Sculpin? What is the average size to head out that far? Sorry I've got lots of questions as this type of fishing sounds like it's something I'd love to try one day.

It's a 23' custom Edwing from Chinook Washington. I would consider her on the small end of the scale for this type of fishing. She has self bailing decks and a 105 gal. fuel tank. She was purposely built for tuna fishing off the Oregon coast by the original owner. The pic in my avatar is of the original owner flying back in from the tuna grounds off Newport Oregon.
 
The weather looks good for Friday and Saturday. Sst's look good but the chloro needs to clean up a bit. Anyone going this Friday or Saturday?

If it all lines up and the weather holds I will give her a whirl again.
 
I am just about fully recovered. I will be doing some cold smoking and some canning today and cleaning up my tackle, then I am good to go! Ill be on it!
 
i think you guys are getting a little hoggish; sure its a lot of fun to get into the albies but i think you should consider getting a commercial licence as that is almost what your doing ; soon it will be like the halibut fishery you will want them all ; take it easy have a self imposed limit like areal sportman
 
I'd be up for a trip this weekend if the weather's good and some guys are going...sculpin, birdsnest, others, just send me some details and we'll hatch out a plan...
 
Thanks Dak for the kind words and for the the loins you left. great pics and info. osama and myself are looking forward to the shootout, maybe to get out sooner. nice pics silvo, congrats on that, it was great to see island bound out again, looking forward to seeing everyone in a couple of weeks.
 
Nice work boys. How'd the fuel bladder work? Anyone stay overnight or to much fish?

As it turns out, we did not need the fuel bladder as we made it back on the boat fuel tank. Was a nice insurance policy and certainly made us more comfortable staying out as long as we did.
 
i think you guys are getting a little hoggish; sure its a lot of fun to get into the albies but i think you should consider getting a commercial licence as that is almost what your doing ; soon it will be like the halibut fishery you will want them all ; take it easy have a self imposed limit like areal sportman

Had a feeling someone would pipe up about this. The difference with the Tuna game in our waters is that most sporties can only make it out for 1 - 2 trips per season. With that being said , The meat yield on a Albie is not great so i feel that a 20 fish limit ( which most guys are not catching each trip ) is very reasonable. Plus with how much $$$ in fuel it takes to get to the grounds and back, you may as well take what you came for.
 
i think you guys are getting a little hoggish; sure its a lot of fun to get into the albies but i think you should consider getting a commercial licence as that is almost what your doing ; soon it will be like the halibut fishery you will want them all ; take it easy have a self imposed limit like areal sportman


Really? I was out with Tofinoguy which will likely be my only trip of the year.....between FOUR guys we bonk 22 and we're greedy? I know in my household that fish will be consumed as I already have picked up my portion and yet to get some smoked now that I am back in Vancouver. I have the meat from just over 5 tuna which is less than TONS of people take for springs in a season.

The window for getting into these fish is a pretty small one and needs a number of variables to line up to make it happen.......in other words it very well may NOT happen again this season for guys sitting and waiting. If you read this thread you will see there are TONS of "ifs" even in the past page or so as to whether or not they can get out there this weekend. It's not quite like chasing salmon where you can keep running out....OVER and OVER and bonking fish after fish after fish....day after day after day.

So what if on Sunday there were maybe 120 tuna bonked between 5 boats....that also did represent from what I can tell as split up between roughly 15 and 20 people.

I would say if you were going to ***** about numbers of fish being taken you may want to look at the numbers of salmon taken over a LONG season as opposed to this very small window to which very, very few ever get to run out 50 miles to give er' a whirl.
 
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