Ended the year right 1-1

[Islander]

We left out of Sebastian on the BaitWasher fri for 1200 ft line off Ft Pierce to make our set, had a great ride out only to find the stream a little and bumpy with a North wind stacking the sea's up a bit.

Made a 4 rod set and stated our drift about 6:30, by 7:30 I realized I should have heeded my wifes warnings about not being over the flu yet , I hate it when she is right .....yea I got the I TOLD YOU SO !!!!!!!!! [-X

So I am not much help and by now Ralph (BaitWasher) is not feeling to hot also, but thankfully weve got two other crew members still on the feet Hank and Joey C..........
so we drift on.

About 9:30 the wind & seas die off and every thing goes slack and our drift changes, 15 minutes latter the balloons/Bait are at and around the boat, so we are trying to reset....without much progress ](*,)

It's about 10:00 now and were just south of sebastian in about 1100 ft of water still working on getting then bait away from the damn boat and............Yep you guessed it #-o a swordie takes the short squid (50') and streaks across the other lines then sounds....this makes for some very entertaining moments :bounce: Ralph , still not feeling well sucks-it up and gets tight on the fish while the rest of us try to to clear the tangled mess the fish has left us with. Ralph gets the fish stoped and back to the boat in short order only to really piss him off and down he goes agian....this time with a vehgeance.

Ralph hangs tuff for awhile butt passes the rod off to Joey for the second half, so now it's his turn to piss him off...... and off he goes ........AGIAN... Joey finally gets him to the boat after a lengthy tug of war at about the 50 ft mark Ralph does a great job of darting him......in the boat he comes we were looking for a 60 incher but he tape out at 57 inches a little smaller than we wanted but he was bad to the bone just the same.

So home we head.. THANK GOD :biggrin:.. altogether its was a good night with a great crew,good fish...... and Joey got his cherry popped :thumleft:




Heading to the sword grounds from Sebastian





Crew of the BaitWasher and a 57" glad to be home and rested at least the crew.....not sure about the swordfish

Wishing every one a great New Year and a fish on ice

Karl

[Shark Tagger]

you guys rock... keep up the good work..

ST

[tunaman81]

Nice...how far is the run to the sword grounds from Sebastian?

[Islander]

Tunaman81,

The run out of Sebastian (SE) to Ft. Pierce out to the 1200ft depth is about 45 miles. During the spring and summer we"ll give the Canyons a shot, (approx 50 miles east of Sebastian) then run to the other side before daybreak for some YFT.

[quack quack]

Islander: Have you ever tried swords on the other side? Maybe chunk up some tuna at night? Thinking of going to other side to try it in the spring out of boynton.

[Islander]

QQ; no, we have'nt as of yet put it's on the list for this summer.

Back when I lived on Andros I gave it some shoots and had some success but the sharks were a major pain in the butt!!!

[Bait Washer]

Originally Posted by quack quack

Islander: Have you ever tried swords on the other side? Maybe chunk up some tuna at night? Thinking of going to other side to try it in the spring out of boynton.

The idea for a trip with calm seas is to punch out of Sebastion early and run to the other side for the evening tuna bite come back in to the Melbourne Canyons for a night drift for swords and then back out for tuna in the morning and then home.
We did a one similar trip last year with a closer drift.
One sword and 3 - 30# + dolphin no tuna but, I was still learning on the
new radar.

[quack quack]

BW What I was thinking was leaving around noon run,troll out to east side of the stream. Set up for swords and work some other lines like up north tuna fishing. Chum with some live bait and chunks maybe bring the tuna into us. Then in the morning look around for tuna to troll for.