September 5, 2023 Cortez 1.5 Day Charter

Calls were made out to all of the FIB’ers to bring their 20-30 and 40-50lb bait setups and be at the landing earlier than our scheduled departure of 9pm. 22 of the FIB’ers began boarding a little before 6pm. Captain Jim gave his speech and Rick Chalmers prayed us in. Once everyone boarded, Captain Jim “Rambo” (I still need to ask where he got the name Rambo) said we were heading south into Mexico. We turned left outside of the break wall, the ocean had a mild bump and south we headed. We motored all the way into gray light and put out the trollers. It wasn’t long before we found a kelp that had a beacon on it. We were greeted by a few Dorado putting on an ariel display and then the fun began. So many people hooked up at once that I couldn’t tell who landed the first fish. I think it was Rob Whittiker, but who knows because everyone was hooked up all at once. The Dorado were very small, but this was all you can eat style of catching. Drop your bait in wherever and you were bit. The bait was the best I have seen it in a while. Lively sardines that were all nice size and ready to swim. We headed back north and ended up back in US waters where we proceeded to quickly fill our bags with limits of smaller grade Dorado. We stopped on around 3 kelp patties that produced a lot of Dorado for us. Unfortunately, the rest of the day was used hunting for tuna, but it wasn’t meant to be. We rolled up on a half-eaten giant squid. The tentacles were around 8 feet long and the head was huge. You can see from the pictures that whatever feasted on it did it shortly before we came up on it. That was one of the coolest things I have seen in the ocean. We had a few blind jig strikes on Dorado and a few more stops, but the afternoon into the early evening was spent searching.
Jeff served up tasty burritos in the morning, delicious fish tacos for lunch and steak dinner to close out the evening. It was nice catching up with the FIB’ers and meeting new members like Dave Balsam. I was amazed at how well the FIB’ers handled the wide-open bite and bouncing their fish rather than having them gaffed. The crew did a great job keeping everything in order. There weren’t a lot of tangles which is a result of everyone listening to the crew. Hopefully we will get into the tuna on the next trip. I’m sure we will all remember the over abundance of US limits on smaller grade Dorado. I know I will. Thanks again to all those who came on the trip. Thank you, Floyd, for praying us out on this trip. It was great to see you out and moving around on this trip. Until next time, tight lines and safe journey on your next hunt. – God Bless, Dan Ross