Islander 2014 - REPORTS

Lunch on day 1 was spaghetti. It's so dope to fish hard for five or six hours and come back to cold drinks and warm food. Being able to wash up and apply a new coat of sunscreen prior to the next five hours of hard fishing is also nice.

The next batch of pics are from our move around the island. On my first trip we never moved and on last year's trip we made this move during the night. It was awesome and the scenery was spectacular.It was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

More from our move.

 

Some island views. Felt like we were in Hawaii for a second!

 

One thing I noticed that was missing from previous reports were pictures of the clutter on the deck.

It was pretty bad this time. 

Fishing was slow for me the whole first day.

This side of the island I thought was the toughest to fish. The depth here drops off rapidly. It was either hug the shoreline for calicos and sheeps or drift the DEEP water looking for exotics. I did a little bit of both. You can tell by the next batch of pictures of the Islander that the fishing was slow.

In hindsight, I should've clipped off to some kelp like I did on day three.

Lesson learned.

 

Ruben and some more shots of the Islander.

 

Some of us fished from before sunrise to sundown.

Here's the curtain going down on day 1.

Day 2 was started in prime halibut territory. Armed with my new trusty reverse dropper loop rig and a tube of bait I was the first one off the boat. I paddled straight for 40 feet and deployed a smallish 7" or so mack. Heading straight for the beach a few yards from a kelp line I got nailed. Fed some line and waited a few seconds, but the big take down never came. Reeled in my bait and it was slashed from about mid-mack all the way down.

Deployed a new, bigger mack and only made it a hundred yards or so when I got a massive take down, then nothing. Reeled in my line to find my 25lb flouro leader was bitten cleanly in half, well above where the hook and 8" mack were. Drag was barely set.

Send down another mack and just a few minutes later it gets nailed. No take down, light scratches mid-way down the fish and I suspect it was a calico bite.

Drop down my last piece of bait which is a decent sized anchovy. I make it a few hundred yards down the beach and it gets hit hard. I feed line and wait, but nothing ever comes back. Reel in and my chovey was bitten in half just below the hook.

Had to paddle back almost a mile to re-up on bait since the skiff hadn't even had a chance to launch yet. Get re-baited up and hit the same stretch of beach hard, but all I could scratch up for the rest of the day was a few calicoes and a whitefish.

Looks like I only took one picture on all of day 2. I think this was landing for lunch.

Actually, I believe these are also from day 2. (My camera's date stamp is wrong and to make it more difficult the time is off, too.)

On day three we moved to the "weather side" of the island, close to where we fished day 2 last year. Not very many people get the opportunity to fish here.

The morning started off decent. The live squid which we had acquired the day before was pretty much getting hit on every drop, but I was getting snagged a lot and was getting pretty frustrated. Today was the last day and we had to make something happen.

Others were doing good, picking up very nice calicoes and some goats.

Here's Ruben with a nice cali. Sorry they didn't come out to good, bro.