The boat repairs took more than one day. I wasn't much help either. I showed up early each morning, out of courtesy I guess. Lance usually dispatched me back to my hotel and pool, unless he had an errand for me to run.

7/30/99

With the repairs finished, we finally were able to get out and do some catching. After getting bait we made our way to the Gordo Banks to look for some Blues. We weren't disappointed either. We arrived before the usual Cabo boats and easily made bait from a school of bonitos. Having the bait rods all set up with feathers for making bait can save much time when these schoolers show up at dawn. In no time, we had 4 bonitos in the tuna tubes.

Lance set out two 80-wides with the live 12-lb bonitos attached. We were trolling at 2-3 knots over the ledge of the outer high spot. I guess it was only about 15 minutes before we got bit. I already had my standup harness on so it didn't take long to get the fish firmly hooked up. Lance quickly brought in the other rod and put the bonito back in the tuna tube while I continued with the hooked fish.

The fish finally started to jump, and we saw that it was indeed, a nice blue marlin. With 40-lbs of drag, you can tire out a medium sized fish in 15 minutes or so. Lance backed down to recover the line the blue peeled off during the initial run. The fish was now right underneath the swim platform. A few more short runs and the fish tired out. Lance leadered the fish and was successful at retrieving the hook. It was a nice blue, around 260 lbs, Lance said later. We revived the fish for a few minutes and released it unharmed.

 

Not a bad start for the morning I thought. I pondered whether my lucky streak would end or keep going. We still had plenty of blue marlin candy left in the tuna tubes, and the fleet boats still hadn't showed up yet. My luck would continue we found out shortly. I was enjoying the sunrise when we got bit again on the port 80-wide again. Lance and I were getting some good practice in for our trip to Madeira next week. In 45 minutes, we had again released another nice 250+ blue marlin.

We continued with trolling the live bonitos for a couple of more hours, but the arrival of the fleet boats and the changing of the tides, slowed things down to nothing more than a boat ride. What a morning. We were back at the slip before noon, with two blue marlin and Tag/Release pennants flying high on the outriggers.

7/31/99

Today, we decided to sleep in and leave the marina after the fleet boats. It's not always necessary to be the first one out. We had a little trouble getting bait because of the late start, most of the bait vendors had gone home or were out of bait. We finally gave up and headed out to the 95 spot to look for some yellowfin tuna that had been reportedly been there yesterday afternoon.

Lance wanted to try out his specially made spreader bar. It's supposed to mimic a small school of squid. The trailing squid is the only one that has a hook in it, and it is purposely designed to look like it is injured. It didn't take long to get bit on this contraption.

Below, a yellowfin hit our spreader bar but we didn't know it was foul hooked. Tiagra TI-50W LRS with 500 yards of spectra, 100 yards of mono top-shot, mounted on a 6-ft hybrid custom straight butt rod. 30 minutes into the fight, a shark attacked the yellowfin, pulling off another 100 yards of line. When we finally got the yellowfin aboard, it was missing it's tail and had very visible teeth marks in it. The spreader bar seemed to work nicely and we were looking forward to seeing how well it would work in Madeira.