Mothership trips

Work em hard, work em soft. I got one with my line in my hand while side sculling to reposition and get it vertical. the jig was fluttering side to side 1 ft off the bottom @ 60ft.

I got one with my line in my hand while side sculling to reposition and get it vertical. the jig was fluttering side to side 1 ft off the bottom @ 60ft.

Halibut?

-Allen

off the Cement Ship in Aptos CA

I used to love fishing off that with my Grandpa back in the 60's.  We had so much fun.  Now they won't even let you yak around it.

Growing up as a kid there you can imagine all the crazy suff we did on and off that thing. Enough stuff to fill a book..and most of it true!

I don't how they enforce that no yakking deal, especially off season. There is a ton of rebar sticking out all over that thing, it's  in pretty sad shape. The Ship has been closed for many years now, never stopped us from going out there at night.

 

I'm getting more and more excited about this idea.

Can we put together a short list of gear that would be needed to deal with Albacore from a kayak?  I doubt that my lightweight rockfishings set-up would work - at least as far as rods and reels go? 

Madoc, I was planning on using my 5'7" no name rod. It's half rod and half handle with a shakespeare T20L spooled with 300 yds of 30 pound power pro, tipped with 30-40 pound flouro, heavy duty swivels. I was also gonna bring my normal bottom fish gear,7 foot medium action Ugly Stik, level wind with 20 pound power pro and my Salmon rod too for back-ups and for some extra fun if after i actually could get one on the heavy gear.

I got a pretty big j plug and a few other lures, anything big, what? 4-6 inches is what i am thinking? they use a plastic squid with a double barbless hook often, doesn't have to be barbless .

Here's a decent article on the lures commonly used:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Trolling-Lures-For-Albacore-Tuna

For kayak tuna the only way I see it working is drifting into jumpers from an upwind/up current mothership drop off and then casting live bait or irons/swimbaits into the jumpers. Then have the mothership pick everyone up after the drift and look for another school and repeat.   Troll speed for albies is way to fast for a yak to pull off, unless of course you can paddle 5-7mph for miles on end . 

Are you're side handles beefy enough for a hand line if you're chummin?

The Mexi feather jig is a popular one.

 

I don't think feathers would be effective enough on the slow troll.

-Allen

Some more words about the fall bite.  I've been on 2-3 hour bait stops before where chum held the fish around. Live bait is best, but we've used dead bait and cut bait with similar success.  So it is possible to splash the kayaks for extended amounts of time and not have to run and gun.  I've had other situations in the fall where we didn't have any chum at all, but we did find an area of working fish and were able to slow troll swimbaits at 2-3 knots.  We were trolling slow because we were also casting on puddlers at the same time.  On that trip, it was a matter of minutes before we hooked up and we worked that area for a good half the day, plugged the boat full of fish, and CNR'd until our arms were sore.

These are not every day occurrence, but they happen often enough.

I don't like to use anything more than 30# outfits.  I use a 20# 7' outfit for live bait, a 25# 8' outfit for castoig swimbaits, and a 30# 7' outfit for jigging irons.  I don't usually like to man a troll rod as I prefer to slide in on a stop, but if I did have to troll, I'll use the 30# outfit if the boat lets me.  On charter boats in particular, a 50# outfit is desired, but only because they like to keep the fish close to the boat and start the chum line.

-Allen

Some more words about the fall bite.  I've been on 2-3 hour bait stops before where chum held the fish around. Live bait is best, but we've used dead bait and cut bait with similar success.  So it is possible to splash the kayaks for extended amounts of time and not have to run and gun.  I've had other situations in the fall where we didn't have any chum at all, but we did find an area of working fish and were able to slow troll swimbaits at 2-3 knots.  We were trolling slow because we were also casting on puddlers at the same time.  On that trip, it was a matter of minutes before we hooked up and we worked that area for a good half the day, plugged the boat full of fish, and CNR'd until our arms were sore.


-Allen

Was this off the Oregon coast?  Have not heard of "dead" bait/chum used as much up here.  In the fall I used to spot jumpers, run up wind of the edge of them and cast into them while tossing either whole live or split bait (fresh killed cut in chunks) to keep them up.  Here in the fall (sept/Oct) the troll bite seems to fall off so most go to running and gunning.  Either way you slice it it would be a fun yak fishery to pioneer

Some more words about the fall bite.  I've been on 2-3 hour bait stops before where chum held the fish around. Live bait is best, but we've used dead bait and cut bait with similar success.  So it is possible to splash the kayaks for extended amounts of time and not have to run and gun.  I've had other situations in the fall where we didn't have any chum at all, but we did find an area of working fish and were able to slow troll swimbaits at 2-3 knots.  We were trolling slow because we were also casting on puddlers at the same time.  On that trip, it was a matter of minutes before we hooked up and we worked that area for a good half the day, plugged the boat full of fish, and CNR'd until our arms were sore.


-Allen

Was this off the Oregon coast?  Have not heard of "dead" bait/chum used as much up here.  In the fall I used to spot jumpers, run up wind of the edge of them and cast into them while tossing either whole live or split bait (fresh killed cut in chunks) to keep them up.  Here in the fall (sept/Oct) the troll bite seems to fall off so most go to running and gunning.  Either way you slice it it would be a fun yak fishery to pioneer

These 2 experiences were off the CA coast.  Not a lot of people use dead bait down here either.  Who saves a couple 5 gal buckets to use?  I used to ride on a few boats that are able to get the turned bait from the bait receivers, so found out that way that it works.  So it's more like "split bait" as you call it.

-Allen

Was this off the Oregon coast?  Have not heard of "dead" bait/chum used as much up here.  In the fall I used to spot jumpers, run up wind of the edge of them and cast into them while tossing either whole live or split bait (fresh killed cut in chunks) to keep them up.  Here in the fall (sept/Oct) the troll bite seems to fall off so most go to running and gunning.  Either way you slice it it would be a fun yak fishery to pioneer

Definetly an awesome experience and if nothing else we could always just catch 'em off the mothership.

It sure would be fun a yak fishery to pioneer...

Any further movement on this?

At the moment, no. Some things came up and i wasn't able to make the bottomfish trips happen. After my tourny i am gonna get it together for hopefully one bottomfish trip and an Albacore trip. I'll keep you posted.