Going tomorrow, Wednesday, April 11th. We will leave from the public pier in the first “alley” of the marine industrial area just past the old departure point which was the public pier next to the Aberdeen Marine Police Station.
Departure around 07:15 and return around 18:00
--- Fishing Report 20120403
The trip out looked promising as water was grey-blue by the mid channel and blue on the tip of Leema Island. There were also several schools of sardines on the surface but nothing apparently with them.
Just a half mile or so bearing 120 the water went green again. We proceeded the 9 miles to the first wreck seeing one school of small tuna with no takes.
From that wreck there was an obvious line due south of us by a couple hundred meters. As we approached there was a school of small tuna on the north side and we made several passes without a strike. We continued south and saw it was a wind line with wind stronger on the north side of the line marking blue water of 22.3 degrees celcius on the south side and 19.8-20.1 on the north side. There was a good trash field in the line with dozens if not hundreds of small birds floating in the line for as far as we fished it. There were also hundreds, if not thousands of cuttlebones in the line making the area look like there was a wholesale slaughter of an entire school of cuttlefish either by predators or a trawler/trawling pair.
We fished up and down that line seeing a few small baitfish and a mahi mahi or 2 cruising in the trash line without experiencing a singles strike. From there we trolled south to another wreck about 9 miles away coming across large patches of seaweed and F&J. As we neared the wreck we saw water temperatures as high as 23.2c or a tick under 74f.
The trip south yielded nothing and by now it was about 2pm so we turned north to troll back toward the first wreck to see what we could find. In blue water we had zero hits, but shortly after the troll toward home from the first wreck, in water that was extremely green, we caught a 4 pound mackerel tuna.
From about 2pm onward there was little wind. The surface of the ocean was like glass. As we came back toward Leema we found many schools of sardines in balls being harassed by small mackerel tuna. We hung out jigging until nearly 6pm hoping to find bigger predators in the area, but nothing doin’.
We had a miss on a very hard strike and extremely fast run that lasted 25-30 seconds. The pickup was on a TLD30 with plenty of line so I set the drag a little harder and gave one pull to make sure the hook was set, felt the fight on the other end and then just let it run. Unfortunately the run ended as abruptly as it started with the lure being dropped. That was the most exciting part of our day.
Shing’s 40’ Egg runs like a top on filtered and polished used vegetable oil. The cat 3208 is a fairly smooth engine to begin with as it’s 636 cubic inches producing only 425hp with a .67 hp to cubic inch ratio it’s not working hard. The experience on waste vegetable oil is smoother still and apparently we got a little better economy using around 300 liters the entire day.
I should be ready to be out in mine for the first time of the season on Saturday as I’ve had my generator being rewound.
Hank
