CharkBait  Charters

Our 10 day charter was one of the strangest trips I've been on. Usually we can count on plenty of tuna, but this year there was no red meat to show. Instead we caught carp! Yep, the marlin were so thick you couldn't help but get bit. Fact is, one angler caught and released 19 of 'em in only two days. The boat brought over 212 marlin to the rail in two days! It was incredible, but not what we were targeting at all. The marlin were mixed in the waters where we caught wahoo and dorado, they were an unintended by-catch. If someone wanted to pull on billfish they could. If you wanted to avoid 'em you'd fish iron for wahoo, as I did, but even then I caught several marlin using wahoo iron like Sea strike 33's. It was downright strange. There were some big tuna off the Mag Bay area, but they weren't biting at all. Probably some of these fish were in the 150-200# class, but the water wasn't making 'em active for us. Like I said, it was a strange trip this year, that's fishing. You never know what it's going to be like until you're at the rail fishing. 10 day trips offer the widest variety of fishing, and this one was no exception. We caught everything from ling cod, rockfish, wahoo, dorado, peanut size yellowfin, tree-fish, and mucho marlin. We fished a lot of 30, 40-50# gear this trip instead of the heavy 60-100#. This year it was an uncrowded rail, with only 19 anglers fishing 105 feet of boat! With the fish counts low, financial markets pessimistic, there was plenty of room on the rail. Don't count on that happening again.

We would like to thank our sponsors for this year's RRIII LR trip. Strike Pro donated some great tuna poppers, Frenzy donated flying fish and their dandy pliers, QuickRig donated a hook pack of some neat double rigs which will be great for tuna and wahoo fishing, Sato donated a rigging kit, Smitty a very nice rod belt, Blackwater provided fluorocarbon leader material to all the guys, Seaguar donated fluorocarbon leader, Catchy Tackle had some iron for everyone, Jerry Brown had an $250 incentive for the largest tuna (but that didn't happen...), Back Bone provided rod clamps, we supplied some additional tackle and tee shirts.

11/16/07 - Well, as luck would have it the big fish did go on a chew the week after we returned from our trip. We'd metered 'em, but they were not rising from the depths (most thinking they were stuffed with squid which was plentiful down off Mag Bay). Now we've had fish to 300 pounds taken and the boats are filling back up. Each trip is different, each memorable in it's own way. I'm sure the marlin bite of '07 will be long remembered as something unique and exciting is it's own way.