Hank's Trip Report Saturday, May 15th

Saturday, May 15^th was not a cracking day to be on the water but was a good day of fishing. The 07:45 run from Aberdeen to Po Toi was fine with three of us on the Reel Infinity leading Kim Stuart and crew of Kiduzi at a comfortable 19 knots. Once past the smaller islands and into the ship channel we ran over 3-4 foot waves that would be with us all day.

Our first fish was in the box at 09:30 with an 8 pound mahi mahi caught. We then trolled between a couple of anchored cargo ships and met up with Shing and crew on the Silverton who had just boated 4 mahi mahi as well. As we trolled past the Silverton and another ship at anchor we had a triple hookup of mahi mahi but managed to drop all three. We had one fisherman down with Mal de Mer leaving two of us to bring in fish and clear lines. It was one step below unmanageable.

Throughout the rest of the day rain came and went and the seas stayed at a slightly irritated level.

Trolling on the way back brought a double strike from two medium sized mahi mahi of about 20 pounds (by length and girth measure the calculated weight was 34.56lbs), Greg brought in the cow and I dropped the slightly larger bull. Both fish were in the air on their first take of the lures. We had both fish on for several minutes and I realized there was no way to bring these two fish to the boat without making a right mess of the other three lines still out so I backed down on the drag a bit hoping my fish would run for home and give me just a second to bring in the other lines. I got one line in and checked over at my hooked up rod to observe that it was already straight and the line slack – my fish was gone. We boated the cow in the photo and continued fishing.

We came upon a pallet and had a quadruple hookup of schoolies – the Chinese coxswain began shouting: “too many mahi mahi, too many.” By that time Ian was ready to bring in a fish and he boated on mahi mahi of 4 pounds. As we trolled away from the area we had a double hook up and Ian landed another fish of maybe 5 pounds and Greg released his two fish of about the same weight.

On the way home we suffered a drive by from a wahoo or a barracuda with the reel screaming for less than a second. I brought in a line with no lure and could see that the loop where the hook had been was sliced cleanly.

We brought home 5 as seen in the picture, boated and released 7 more and dropped 6 (conservatively) for a total of 12 fish caught on the day. This was the second Saturday in a row of good fishing.