2013 Tuna adventures
- Thread starter Sculpin
- Start date
jeffywestcoast
Well-Known Member
that big fatty in the bleed bucket behind Sculpin looks pretty fat hey..mmmm TUNA!
jeffywestcoast
Well-Known Member
Wow that's a huge one..looks like a fun fishery no doubt, something i wanna try one day, do they peel line like a big chinook? what is the fight like?
Aces
Well-Known Member
Sculpin
Well-Known Member
Best day off shore ever!!!
A big thank you to Birdsnest for letting us tag along with him and crew his boat on this epic day. It was very cool to see how his tuna system works on his boat and to actually work his tuna system on his boat (at least we tried lol). We were both impressed with the ride and layout of the cabin on the Dawn Patrol. Very nice boat.
Firelight and I met Birdsnest in Tofino for a 4 a.m. launch. We iced up at Birdsnest's top secret ice plant (very sweet) and headed out in the darkness.
It was a little bumpy on the ride out but not bad at all. As it started to get light out we came upon our first encounter with marine life. A pod of Orca's.
I was still half a sleep and wasn't fast enough on the camera to get any better shots. The other guys might have gotten some better ones.
After some more travelling and some radio chatter we decided to start fishing. It is very cool how the rigs are all ready to go and just attach them to the hand lines or rods. The spread was deployed in no time flat. Very simple and fast.
First one in the boat......
Things are looking up......
We kept plugging away at them and ended up with 15 for the day. Most of them were a nice grade of fish and quite a few in the mid to high twenties. It was a slug fest with lots of time put in. We had one bout of about 4 hours without a hit. We left at 4 a.m. and didn't return to the dock until 8 p.m. I believe Birdsnest said we were just shy of 150 miles travelled that day. Long day on the water but sooo worth it (God I love it out there). We all took naps at one point during the day lol.
The big highlight was the dolphin and whale show late in the day. The dolphins were everywhere and at one point we were mixed up with a few hundred of them!
Here is Birdsnest and our buddies off the bow (click the pic for the movie).
Firelight and myself took a turn at it as well. What a blast. They actually turn on there sides and look up at you. They like it when you drag your hands in the water too.
On the way in we came across a huge number of whales. I would say there were at least 50 of them in a 5 mile radius. Tails, backs, and spouts for as far as the eye could see. Really cool to see such a large concentration of these majestic creatures.
We stopped the boat well away from one group and killed the engine. They swam up to us to check us out. Birdsnest got out his underwater camera on a pole and started filming. I think he got some pretty killer footage. I can't wait to see it.
This one whale slowly raised it's head out of the water and turned side to side to look at us with both eyes. Absolutely incredible.
I would have to say it was the best day off shore I have ever experienced. The weather, the fishing, and the company were all great. It was really nice to be able to share it with some great folks and will not be forgotten any time soon. I still haven't come down yet.
Till the next adventure........
Cheers,
Sculpin
A big thank you to Birdsnest for letting us tag along with him and crew his boat on this epic day. It was very cool to see how his tuna system works on his boat and to actually work his tuna system on his boat (at least we tried lol). We were both impressed with the ride and layout of the cabin on the Dawn Patrol. Very nice boat.
Firelight and I met Birdsnest in Tofino for a 4 a.m. launch. We iced up at Birdsnest's top secret ice plant (very sweet) and headed out in the darkness.
It was a little bumpy on the ride out but not bad at all. As it started to get light out we came upon our first encounter with marine life. A pod of Orca's.
I was still half a sleep and wasn't fast enough on the camera to get any better shots. The other guys might have gotten some better ones.
After some more travelling and some radio chatter we decided to start fishing. It is very cool how the rigs are all ready to go and just attach them to the hand lines or rods. The spread was deployed in no time flat. Very simple and fast.
First one in the boat......
Things are looking up......
We kept plugging away at them and ended up with 15 for the day. Most of them were a nice grade of fish and quite a few in the mid to high twenties. It was a slug fest with lots of time put in. We had one bout of about 4 hours without a hit. We left at 4 a.m. and didn't return to the dock until 8 p.m. I believe Birdsnest said we were just shy of 150 miles travelled that day. Long day on the water but sooo worth it (God I love it out there). We all took naps at one point during the day lol.
The big highlight was the dolphin and whale show late in the day. The dolphins were everywhere and at one point we were mixed up with a few hundred of them!
Here is Birdsnest and our buddies off the bow (click the pic for the movie).
Firelight and myself took a turn at it as well. What a blast. They actually turn on there sides and look up at you. They like it when you drag your hands in the water too.
On the way in we came across a huge number of whales. I would say there were at least 50 of them in a 5 mile radius. Tails, backs, and spouts for as far as the eye could see. Really cool to see such a large concentration of these majestic creatures.
We stopped the boat well away from one group and killed the engine. They swam up to us to check us out. Birdsnest got out his underwater camera on a pole and started filming. I think he got some pretty killer footage. I can't wait to see it.
This one whale slowly raised it's head out of the water and turned side to side to look at us with both eyes. Absolutely incredible.
I would have to say it was the best day off shore I have ever experienced. The weather, the fishing, and the company were all great. It was really nice to be able to share it with some great folks and will not be forgotten any time soon. I still haven't come down yet.
Till the next adventure........
Cheers,
Sculpin
Last edited by a moderator:
Aces
Well-Known Member
Karma-Kazi
Active Member
I love reading this thread. One day im going to have to boogie up there from vic and try and sneak onto one of these boats and get out there! I would love to try this one day!
-KK
-KK
I'm just working on getting all the pics from the trip organized, But here are a few. This trip had a purpose it was time for my brother and I to take our girlfriends Jo and gwen out for their fist albie. The girls have always wondered why we go to tofino and come back beat up, tired and smelling like fish......Lets just say they know all the reasons now. They each managed a bunch of nice tuna for the day, not amazing fishing but good enough with 17 on and 11 to hand. Thanks to birdsnest we on ran 33 miles offshore to the canyons. As always we ran two rapalas and a bunch of other junk and the rapalas did well. I was kinda scary to see that 40+ come up hanging with one point of the treble in his mouth!
spring fever
Well-Known Member
Now there's a couple of Keepers!!! LOL
Birdsnest
Well-Known Member
I love how everyone has their style of catching these things and yet the numbers ( totals ) seem to be relatively the same. Mikep's boat is AMAZING and he runs a friendly crew too, Glad you got'em and that 43 is Huge! Unbelievable!!!!
Fishing with Sculpin and Firelight was a pleasure. I didnt have to yell at anyone, not even close. They ran my "system" pretty well and in all honesty some parts are challenging. At one point in the day we pulled all the gear and ran out another 12 miles (against the advice of a buddy on mine on the "mega bite"(another boat out there), to see if we could find some bigger numbers but out there we saw no birds or anything so we just drove back to where we were. My point is those two did a text book pull the lines and travel and deploy the lines again. I have never seen all the lines go out so quick and without difficulty.
Here is the whale video. At 12 seconds on this video you can hear a whale communication but you have to turn your volume up and listen closely.
Fishing with Sculpin and Firelight was a pleasure. I didnt have to yell at anyone, not even close. They ran my "system" pretty well and in all honesty some parts are challenging. At one point in the day we pulled all the gear and ran out another 12 miles (against the advice of a buddy on mine on the "mega bite"(another boat out there), to see if we could find some bigger numbers but out there we saw no birds or anything so we just drove back to where we were. My point is those two did a text book pull the lines and travel and deploy the lines again. I have never seen all the lines go out so quick and without difficulty.
Here is the whale video. At 12 seconds on this video you can hear a whale communication but you have to turn your volume up and listen closely.
Derby
Crew Member
Look forward to fishing on your boat in the Tuna shoot out...you didn't tell me we had some new crew members...... nice catching this weekend..... cheers
We had a great time out at Neah Bay this weekend. My wife and I went out Friday and got the boat fueled and ready to go for a Sat. salmon trip with a tuna trip planned for Sunday. We stayed at a cabin at Cape Resort Fri-Sun night. Friday evening another couple joined us and after a few drinks we hit the hay for a 6AM departure from the docks. Myself and the other guy got up a little earlier and loaded the boat with some ice. We ran about 30 nm from Neah Bay SSW to the "Compass Rose" area to look for big kings. We trolled for a long time with very little action and after relocating a couple of times eventually started to find fish. We got 3 kings but none were bigger than about 12 lbs. We filled our limit with hatchery coho (8 fish total). I brought in perhaps the biggest coho I've ever caught at around 20lbs. We got back to the dock around 7PM and processed and vacuum packed the fish until well after dark.
Sun AM we got up with the plan to go tuna fishing and hoped to be off the dock around 6AM. Again, myself and the other guy loaded up the boat with ice (this time, a few 100 lbs). We needed fuel but Big Salmon resort was out so we had to wait for the Makah mini mart fuel dock to open at 7AM. Made some cinnamon rolls on the boat and got to the fuel dock 10-15 mins before it opened so we were first in line. We put in about 50 gals to get the boat back to full and pushed off around 7:15AM. We ran out past Tatoosh and set a course for the end of Nitinat Canyon. We slowed on the way out at "Blue Dot" to check the sonar for fish as there was a lot of bird activity there. After a brief stop, we continued on looking for warm blue water and lots of birds. Never found any particular signs of life that made it clear we should stop and fish so we continued on a course of about 220degrees.
By 11:15, we decided we had gone far enough as we were now about 68nm offshore (75nm from port). We had recently passed a big pod of pacific white sided dolphins that played in our bow wake and that's usually a good sign. I turned out that we picked a good spot as it was only about 5-10 mins before we landed our first albacore of the trip. We trolled about 5nm farther and picked up a few more along the way and then started doing figure 8's in the place where we caught our second fish. We wound up hooking a total of 18 albacore between 11:15AM and 3:15PM and landed 17 of them. The water temps ranged between 65.5 and 66.9 degrees. At the farthest, we were 80nm from port as a crow flies so maybe 85nm on the water.
On the way back in, we stopped at Blue Dot and fished for salmon for an hour or so. We caught two 20 lb kings and a couple of hatchery coho to round out the day. We ran back in averaging 30MPH with an few stops to observe - more pacific white sided dolphins, many humpback whales and a large pod of orcas. We hit the dock at 8PM on the dot and got some more ice on the fish before turning in. Monday AM we spent cleaning and vacuum packing fish and cleaning the boat. We split the fish with the other couple and I pulled out of Neah Bay around 2PM with a 168 qt. cooler filled to the brim with layers of fish, ice and a little rock salt. Spent the night in Sequim so I could avoid the ferry traffic and caught the first ferry home this AM. The fish we frozen solid by the time I got home at 5:40AM and my freezers are now completely packed a combination of tuna, coho and king. All-in-all it was a great trip.
Sun AM we got up with the plan to go tuna fishing and hoped to be off the dock around 6AM. Again, myself and the other guy loaded up the boat with ice (this time, a few 100 lbs). We needed fuel but Big Salmon resort was out so we had to wait for the Makah mini mart fuel dock to open at 7AM. Made some cinnamon rolls on the boat and got to the fuel dock 10-15 mins before it opened so we were first in line. We put in about 50 gals to get the boat back to full and pushed off around 7:15AM. We ran out past Tatoosh and set a course for the end of Nitinat Canyon. We slowed on the way out at "Blue Dot" to check the sonar for fish as there was a lot of bird activity there. After a brief stop, we continued on looking for warm blue water and lots of birds. Never found any particular signs of life that made it clear we should stop and fish so we continued on a course of about 220degrees.
By 11:15, we decided we had gone far enough as we were now about 68nm offshore (75nm from port). We had recently passed a big pod of pacific white sided dolphins that played in our bow wake and that's usually a good sign. I turned out that we picked a good spot as it was only about 5-10 mins before we landed our first albacore of the trip. We trolled about 5nm farther and picked up a few more along the way and then started doing figure 8's in the place where we caught our second fish. We wound up hooking a total of 18 albacore between 11:15AM and 3:15PM and landed 17 of them. The water temps ranged between 65.5 and 66.9 degrees. At the farthest, we were 80nm from port as a crow flies so maybe 85nm on the water.
On the way back in, we stopped at Blue Dot and fished for salmon for an hour or so. We caught two 20 lb kings and a couple of hatchery coho to round out the day. We ran back in averaging 30MPH with an few stops to observe - more pacific white sided dolphins, many humpback whales and a large pod of orcas. We hit the dock at 8PM on the dot and got some more ice on the fish before turning in. Monday AM we spent cleaning and vacuum packing fish and cleaning the boat. We split the fish with the other couple and I pulled out of Neah Bay around 2PM with a 168 qt. cooler filled to the brim with layers of fish, ice and a little rock salt. Spent the night in Sequim so I could avoid the ferry traffic and caught the first ferry home this AM. The fish we frozen solid by the time I got home at 5:40AM and my freezers are now completely packed a combination of tuna, coho and king. All-in-all it was a great trip.
Sculpin
Well-Known Member
All in all I would say that was an excellent trip! Great report. Have you got any pictures to share?
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Thursday I am HOPING!! Anyone in for a Buddy Boat??
Wondering...
Nog
Wondering...
Nog
tykkyt e blue
Well-Known Member
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