We met up Sunday morning at the "public ma tau" between the Aberdeen Boat Club and the Aberdeen Marine Police station with high expectations to fish an overcast day at the new moon. It was already a warm 29c/84f with near shore water almost as warm at 27c/81f and very humid - we were on the way to 34c/93f with an Accuweather "realfeel" of 42c/107f.
The trip offshore was done at a gentle 19 knots with the thirsty 800hp Man diesels just ticking over at 1,600rpm. The sea state was very calm except for 8-10 foot rollers with very long intervals. It was a great, comfortable trip out.
I watched the water in our wake turn from green to green/grey about in the middle of the ship channel and saw that the water temperature was getting warmer as we moved offshore at 27.8/82f. Just past the Northeast tip of Lema Island the water was another half degree warmer but the water was not yet blue.
I headed out about 150 toward the near wreck that is 9 miles or so off south southeast of the tip of Lema. Over the next 5 miles the water gradually changed to all grey, then grey-blue and finally beautiful “put the spread out” blue. We went lines wet at 08:30 and around 3.5 miles from the wreck and started trolling toward it. The water temperature was about 29c/84.5f. Monday the northerly winds replaced the previous southerlies
We trolled around the area of the wreck seeing birds, flying fish and small baitfish continuously. However, over the first hour and a half we had one strike resulting in a missed hook-up; a very slow start to a day for which I had high hopes.
That area was left behind as we headed further offshore in search of tide/current lines, flotsam and jetsam. Tide and current lines were difficult to distinguish with the rolling seas.
By about 11:00am we were in a large trash field about 26 miles offshore and picked up our first mahi mahi of the day. We fished that area for another hour picking up and dropping fish almost continuously.
During one of our runs through the area, one of the bent butt rods went off that was towing a Williamson rubber mullet. The drag is tightened down fairly hard on that reel just to keep the rubber mullet from pulling drag when it dives. That reel started screaming in a very high speed run, my first thought was: wahoo. Van grabbed the rod and held it up and as I brought the boat to a stop he shouted up – it’s still pulling hard and fast. Unfortunately, the fish was either not hooked well or was just holding the lure in its mouth in such a way as not to be hooked. The scream stopped and we reeled the lure back in to have a look: there wasn’t a mark on the lure.
My guess is that it was a large sailfish, which nobody has caught one of this year by the way, or a marlin that had mouthed the lure in such a way not to have been hooked. A wahoo, barracuda, large mahi mahi or tuna would have left marks in the soft rubber.
We had another boat get fairly close and it looked like a Bert 46 or 50. They had started fishing the area we were in and I thought it was time to give that area a rest. Besides, there was a large Maersk container ship about 5 miles further offshore that had been drifting all morning practically begging us to come pick fish out from under her.
The first pass saw mahi mahi bolting out from under her bow and we had one hook-up and three misses. Over the next hour or so we had similar strikes with a triple strike resulting in 2 fish boated and one missed.
While the guys were taking photos with the larger of the fish caught on that run, someone dropped the fish and it bounced through the sea door. By the way, let me know if you find my sea door as the hinge screws pulled out and it fell off of the back of the boat on the way offshore!
As we left the container ship we fished back through the trash field catching and missing a couple more mahi mahi and 4 small kawa kawa tuna. We fished from there back toward Hong Kong coming within 5 miles of Lema before the water had turned green-grey again prompting us to bring the lines in, put the outriggers up and headed for the barn.
It was a good day of fishing with the final tally being 8 mahi mahi (4 kept for the table) and 4 tuna (2 kept) with 6 more mahi mahi lost or dropped back in. We used a large salmon landing net leaving the gaff put away – all returned safe and sound.
Hank
