Out for YFT, Ended with 5 and a WFO Barracuda Bite

Headed out with my good buddy John to hit the “wide-open” Yellowfin Tuna bite yesterday. Woke up at 3am and was at John’s ready to go by 4 with a couple of other buddies. Headed straight to the 425 to troll some jigs, no long rods today. First jig stop provided two Skipjack on the jigs (cedar plugs and a mexican flag) and two YFTs on sardines.  Looked around for signs of life for a while and had the second jig stop that brought in two small YFT in the 10-15 pound class on the jig rods and got another to come up on bait. I hooked one and promptly broke the 25 pound line about 30 seconds into the first drag burning run. Oh wellllllll. John lost a nice one too. This all happened before 9:30 and those would be the last of the tuna for the day.

Not being on who takes too lightly to a thorough skunking, we found a wide-open Barracuda bite about halfway home, with birds diving, bait fishing coming out of the water and airborne Barracuda in hot pursuit at the current break. Not exactly the gamefish that I had in mind, but this would have to do, I was in a bind. We quickly pitched in some sardines and had a steady pick on aggressive Barracuda for the rest of the morning. That stop removed my morning stripe in short order allowing me to hold my head high…lol. The baits were repeatedly boiled on and smacked around. Here is Joel’s last bait from the last stop on the way home:

It was a sweet morning on the water! Slow for some, but we did as good or better than many boats out there today.