About six years ago 10 of us went to Westport Washington and hired the 58' Rampage. We went out around 50 miles to the Blue water and pulled in 106 Albacore's in one day. By the end of the day, everyone had enough as they were tougher than pulling in a halibut. Was a great experiance!
Awesome! Its one of the top things to do on my list! Can you share your gear list? Rods, reels, bait etc?
Really would like to see some pictures !
Arctic Lake
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Read Teddy Roosevelt “ The Man In The Arena “ !
Just normal halibut rods/reels. They were all Penn reels, 2 speed. No bait needed but you can try chucking bait out if you wanted to cast to them and get into an area with lots of birds and the surface is boiling with bait and tuna. We sometimes troll x-raps on the rods right on the stern but didn't need to on this trip. Various simple plain cedar plugs and zukers in the the clear/white color, mexican flag and the other one I think is called the big party or something like that. All in all cedar plugs and the white/clear did the bulk of our damage. Run offshore until you hit the blue water and the temp jumps up, look for your first sign of activity with birds/bait and start trolling. Biggest thing to ensure is you have LOTS of ice and anywhere you can put coolers you do or any storage compartments. We stopped by the fish plant and got a pile of salt ice in the morning before heading out and had ice absolutely everywhere in coolers and storage compartments under seats and the fish box below the aft seat.
Working on it. Hopefully in the next day, just slammed with work and still feeling a bit beat up.
I don't know how to post pictures? The boat supplied the rods and reels and we used live bait. In hindsight, I would have brought a heavier rod and reel combo as these fish were all between 20 and 30 lbs which the captain said was bigger than normal. We trolled until we hooked up and then he stopped and threw out a bunch of live anchovies. Then we all hooked a live bait fish on and threw it overboard one person at a time and the tuna would hit it at about 30 mph. Most of the time all ten of us would be fighting fish at once! The lines would cross up, but the young deck hands would get us uncrossed and we usually got them all in, after near a half hour of battle! They bleed a lot, so pretty soon a bunch of Blue sharks would come and bite our fish as we fought them, some were ten feet long. Westport is a beautiful little marina townsite with restaurants and older hotels, buildings etec and was a nice getaway. Back then with tipping and motel, traveling expenses it worked out to about $1000.00 per person, but we all took home over a 100lbs each of tuna fillets in our coolers packed in sea ice. Also, the water can get real rough out there, so be aware for sea sickness!
Will try and figure out the picture thing or Sitkaspruce will post them up but do have these two short vids of my buddy's first tuna. We always give him the gears as when salmon fishing he is so focused when a fish is on and he's fighting it that we tell him to "talk himself through it".
https://youtube.com/shorts/dyzHlGGKgS8?feature=share
https://youtube.com/shorts/OpBf5aDpuKY?feature=share
This is awesome! I need to do this.
It's been a while and I'm going to look to see what kind of upgrades can be done to make posting pictures easier. Will be putting on a Christmas Raffle like previous years targeting some if not all to upgrades. See how the raffle goes always like to support local causes as well.
Was Johnybear out there with you guys this trip? I kind of lost touch and need to reach out again to see how he's doing.
Cheers,
Marc.
Member of the Following Organizations:
BCWF