Headed out a bit later than normal, and saw the fleet steaming to the popular spots. We zigged when they zagged and ended up about 60 off to the south over some good bottom. Trolled for an hour or so with only a couple of blackfin lost at the boat and an albacore. Lost interest in that really fast when the sonar was screaming "Stop and Drop ". This spot has been good to me before so we yanked the trolling stuff out of the water, readied the pain poles, got a drift line, and broke out the anchor. I told the crew that this was gonna be good. Dropped anchor in the 215 ft of water, and once the rode came tight we were sitting right where we wanted to be. Drop and reel jumbo triggers, some sand tiles , and jumbo b-liners mixed in. Alan caught a beautiful indigo parrotfish, Jeff scored his first fish ever vertical jigging and it was a stud of a red grouper. A few amberjacks and almacos were smacking the jigs, while Amy, Sam, and Rob kept piling trigger after trigger in the brine tank. Alan had the battle of his life on a jigging rod when he, after what seemed like forever, brought a 350 lb. true tiger shark to the boat. I joined in on the fun and yanked up an AJ in the 80 to 90 lb. range.
The fishing never slowed, and Thankfully the crew responsibily took a few breaks, changed between techniques and wanted to try some other stuff to avoid going over the limits. Amy, however, was a machine when it came to bringing up two hubcap sized triggers at a time. We left them biting and we were running out of room and legality to stay there any longer so we went on the high speed troll to put some miles in towards shore. We ran a bit out of the way after I saw how much the guys were enjoying vertical jigging and stopped on a wreck for the "Last drop". It was a pretty fast paced action and the big aj's and albacore were piling on the jigs, everybody who wanted to caught a few fish there and then it was time to head to the hill.
The ride in got a bit sloppy for the last 15 or so miles, but it was nice to have a day when sloppy, meant that we had to back it off to about 30 kts.
Everybody took coolers full of fish home, the weather was beautiful, the crew was a joy to have on board, the fish were jumping in the boat, and the Captain even had some triggers left over that wouldn't fit in the crews 6 or 7 coolers. Thanks Again Guys, It was a pleasure !!