Day 5.
Well the song “It’s the final countdown” was playing in my head as we had breakfast this morning. We quickly finished up and got the boats launched while the wind was down. We headed in a completely different direction today, heading east instead of west.
The routine was started the same. Fast jigging with flat fall jigs in 100 ish ft of water. I hooked into a blue crevalle pretty quickly, which was pretty fun to catch.
The blue on its back was really cool to see.
We fished a while longer and got some bait, bonito and rainbow runners. A big rooster took the runner but not the 12/0 circle hook in it. I caught a spotted rose snapper that went into the box for dinner. We then had a shark chomp the back end off the bonito and decided it was time to move.
The previous day we had told our guide that we had already caught good roosters so we wanted to try for some other species. We ended up trolling for a while and got a wahoo to hit one of the cranks. Unfortunately it didn’t stay connected, but it kept us rolling for a while longer.
We then decided to do some deep jigging in 350 ish feet of water with 300 gram jigs. The wind and current was high so you had to predict where the boat would drift and the current would carry your hook so that it was roughly vertical by the time it hit bottom. Not an easy task in a bouncing panga!
My son dropped first and immediately connected with something very big. The local captain started yelling “grande piscado” and was really excited. It was at that moment that the 50lb braid broke. The guides were guessing but suspected that it was either a broom tail or Goliath grouper that got back into the rocks and cut the line.
While he was bringing his up, I got a tilefish. Not much of a fight, but a new species. I followed that up with another small snapper (didn’t catch the name). Both will be dinner tonight.
The guides decided that the current and waves were just too much to stay on the deep spot so we moved back to the area we started to end the day, catching a few more bonito and rainbow runners there.
And then the day was over.
Overall, a great trip. Caught lots of good fish despite tough conditions and got to spend some great time with my son. I will likely do a follow up post with thoughts on the lodge itself for those that are considering it. Kind of a pros/cons list along with some recommendations from our experience.
Thanks for reading along and hopefully you all enjoyed the posts.
Day 5 done.
SS
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