Got a call very late Friday night from ED that the second seat was not going to be able to make it for the offshore shakedown trip with his new 18' Wellcraft CC. After getting a few things together, I told him I was going to be able to fill the seat.
We launched early and headed out to the 14 mile bank. We found a small kelp paddy with a dozen boats on and around it catching dorado, multiple hookups at a time. The water temp was 76 degrees and the express lane for the pelagics was open for business. After scoring a nice sized dodo, we left there towards Catalina for some bass action. On the way, we saw some other boaters on yet another paddy, so we just had to stop. We were trolling around the congregation of boats looking for straglers when this boater starts to come in behind us in the area of our trolling lines. We speeded up a bit to get aditional distance and when the boat passes behind us, the trolling rig starts the scream. We think were hooked on the boat, then this dorado explodes right at the bow of the guys boat with our trolling lure in it's mouth. The guy got the boat stopped in time and we bring in dodo number two for the day. We decide to head to Catalina for some bass action.
We fish the front side and I get a couple of bass, and Ed gets a couple of larger bass of course. I was using a few of the Big Hammer chovy colored baits and went through all of them in short order. I switched over to some of the MC swim baits without any takers, so I switched to running a Mogambo in the hoped of going weedless on my 14lb rig. A few minutes later, Ed slammed this 5.6lb hog.
We left Catalina after hitting the fuel dock for $4.60 a gallon and headed back to the mainland in the PV area. Not alot of takers and tried Point Fermin but the wind was howling and the trolling motor was getting a real workout trying to keep us orientated. We called it a day and it was another great day on the water..
Perry