I ran a few trips before the holidays and most of the winter patterns are starting to set in. In mid december we went out and looked all around the east side and found plenty of balls of pogies with tuna on them including some nice yellowfin. The tuna were so set on pogies that they wouldnt hit hardly anything else although we did hook one or two good yf on poppers and pulled the hooks. The blackfin were hitting pretty decently though on the frenzy poppers and we put 10 nice ones in the boat. I went and tried to jig for ajs or scamps but the jack crevelles were too thick.
I took my friend shane out a few days later and we tried some new spots. We had three troll bites all day and they were barely legal yfs. I was marking a lot of tuna though and we were able to jig up 15-16 nice bfs on anteater jigs along with a few lesser ajs and one giant beeliner.
I was able to get one more trip in before christmas and this was the trip I was waiting for. First spots yielded just blackfin on the troll although I did see some tuna busting on mullet. Got to our next rig and the drags were screaming as the first hoo of the winter hit the deck and weighed 81 pounds. We worked that set over and it was typical action with 5 landed for 12 bites.
Worked over a bunch more spots but the bite pretty much shut down after noon.
12-28-2012, 09:30 PM
offshore Venice LA
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