October Tuna!

It's October, and the fall storms are starting to roll into the coast.  The warmer water is starting to subside, pulling the tuna further and further out of range for our sport boats.

 The water was clear and blue..

We had a very short weather window on Saturday and decided to head west to good ole' Garibaldi! 

Mother ocean was calm to us in the morning, but began to blow hard from the south by afternoon.   The morning met us with a comfortable 6ft swell from the WNW at 12 seconds.   Wind waves came from the South at just a foot or so in the morning.    The ride out greeted us with a partial rainbow and photographic moment.

 

After clearing the jaws, we knew we had a good window of opportunity to catch fish.   We headed west past Johnny Bowles and the salmon crew.

We found our first fish along the 30 line but headed further west as far as the 125.03.    We stayed south of Garibaldi, around the 23-30 N/S line, knowing that we were going to have to run back to the barn with the wind at our back. 

The ocean was teaming with life.  Jumpers, birds, whales, and dolphins were everywhere.

We spotted many sets of jumpers but none that we could hook up and keep the school at the boat.  We kept heading west until commie (commercial tuna boat) after commie began to pop up on the horizon.   Before we knew it there were 11 commercial guys all around us.  We couldn't get an iron bite, so we decided to troll a couple swim baits.   FISH ON!    Even with these fish being hooked, we still only hooked up a handful on live bait during these stops.  For some reason, the fish were keying on trolled swimbaits today, rather than LIVE bait!?   odd, for sure!   But we found the pattern, put it together, and made it happen!  Trolling 4 rods at a time, our numbers slowly rose.   By the time the wind was howling up from the south, we had 27 tuna on ice and we called it a day.   Pulled in gear and ran east.  The run in was pretty smooth and the bar crossing was like glass. ... I even slept the whole way across and was woken up once we were inside!  That's a first.

Well, that was probably the last trip of the year before they get out of reach for us sporties.   Thanks Charlie Tuna for another fun year to play!  Can't wait til you come back next summer!  Bring more other pelagics with ya!