Constitution (H&M) 10/25-10/27/24

Left H&M on Friday morning about 10 a.m. on the Constitution with captains Jeff/Sam, Sal, Jaden and Tracy. First off, excellent crew. Jeff and even Sam get a little excited at times. If you're thin skinned or overly sensitive...find another hobby. However, they are fishy mofos and are absolutely customer-service oriented if you actually want to catch fish.

This trip was with by brothers and sisters with Reel Warriors Foundation (yes, I'm a veteran.) Several first timers and a few of us had done this before. Plan was to head south for YFT. Farthest south I'd been before was about 130 miles, directly west of Colonet (if you're using OnX). We went further, west of Lazaro Cardenas. Probably 150 miles. Keep in mind, this is a 2-day trip, so first thought for me was, not going to have a lot of fishing time. Didn't matter. Bait were HUGE. I've never seen deans that big. They were 8-10# long. This will be important as you read one.

Captains Jeff/Sam got a couple footballs on the troll Saturday morning. Within an hour, probably 10 a.m. on Saturday, we found them. WIDE OPEN BITE FOR FOUR PLUS HOURS. 23 passengers total. It was non-stop and at one point, I believe we had at least 9 on. All in the 75-100# range. The YFT were jumping all over, blow ups everywhere between 20-150 yards from the boat. One guy hooked up twice on a popper. The rest of us fly lined. Most were running 40-50 lb set ups. My first one was on my Teramar with a Speedmaster 16 running a 50# leader with a long 50 or 60 mono topshot with 65# braid underneath. Took a little while but I could tell I was a little under-gunned. I ended up using my Terez with a Speedmaster 25 running 100 braid/100 mono and I used a barrel swivel then tied 60# flouro. Landed the next one.

The next four hook ups, I hooked and handed off for my fellow veterans. Third one got landed. Fourth sawed off at gaf when the fish went under the stern. At that point, the YFT were retarded and biting everything. So I replaced my swivel and tied 80# flouro. F it!!! Two more hooked and handed off - landed both. At that point, the deckhands or I were tightening down my drag and those who I handed off too basically put the wood on those fish and dragged them to the boat.

With regard to the large sardines. Typically, we all run lighter flouro so that it doesn't mess with the way the bait swim to give good presentation to the target fish. Here, our bait looked like small trout. Even with my 80#, those bait fish were taking off like freaking missiles. I was able to land those last fish inside 20 mins. I saw guys and gals taking 40+ minutes. One guy took 2 hours. All because they were running lighter gear/line. I don't think anyone else had 100# gear. That made a huge difference. Come prepared unless you want to hang out on the rail for a long time or get chewed off, which happened a lot. At the end of the trip, I was looking over other people's reels, especially those who had to rent. Their spools were half empty. One or two guys actually got spooled. Gear up.