Overnight trip on the Thunderbird 7-18-09

[Ricky-Ray]

Jumped at the chance to fish on the Thunderbird for an overnight limited load trip. Left work at 6pm and made a bee line towards Davey's Locker. As soon as I hit the 405 and the 55 freeway BAM solid wall of cars not moving on the 55, made a slight detour and took side streets and I finally get to Davey's Locker just a little after 8pm. Not too bad for a Friday night. Tonight's crew would be Captain Jim at the helm and Miriam as relief Captain, "K" and Christina as Deckhands and I forgot what the galley cooks name was. Once there got signed in and secured my rod spots and bunk and within a little bit we took off at 9pm and headed for the bait receiver. Tonight's bait would consist mainly of sardines and some anchovies. There were a few pieces of live squid from the previous trip and we were going to try and make some more if not we would have to see if we could get some from one of the squid boats.




The crossing to San Clemente Island was not the best but then again I've been in worst, just hard to get a decent night's sleep. Woke up somewhere around 4 in the morning and the squid lights were already out, but with at least 6 sea lions around us the squid never came to float. Radio calls to a few boats and squid boats all came back with the same results....no squid. Finally we get a call from the Carnage and they had just barely a scoop. We took it and set off on our hunt for the day.

We had a decent pick in the grey light. Dropper loop setup with a 4-6oz torpedo worked well. We managed to go 2 for 4 on the yellowtail and 3 for 4 on the halibut. Our biggest yellowtail came in at about 35 pounds on the spring scale. After daylight the bite shutdown and we made a move to the backside of the island where the day before they were landing monster sized calico's and some yellowtail too. We picked up an assortment of calicos', sheepheads, whitefish and a few perch and barracuda's but we never got t
he yellowtail to show. Motored around the backside for the rest of the day from spots here and there and we would get a slow pick at the fish. Some spots there were fish on the meter but they just did not want to play with us today.















Finally with a little time left Captain Jim decides to do a halibut drift. As we head over to the spot we see some Navy boy's playing with their toys. They pretty much left us alone for the most part, just circling around us here and there. Finally just as we were about to leave they motor over to us and asked us if we could move the boat. We told them we were leaving anyway and they thanked us and took off. A bit of a bumpy ride on the way back in so it felt really good once we finally hit dry land.



All in all kind of a slow day of fishing but it is what it is. Crew was great, very friendly and easy to get along with. Will definitely be back for sure.


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