I had another trip today, the second day in a row. It was another group of locals and another half day. Two of the four in the group are friends of mine, which tends to put more pressure on me to produce. On top of that, one of my buddies, Gage a well known local bartender, acknowledges he is the “Gato Negro” on fishing trips. He’s the Black Cat, The bad luck. There is an old superstition on fishing boats. Bananas are bad luck. Gage is the walking banana. Fishing was tough the day before and today I had to deal with the Curse of Gage the Bartender!
We decided to troll today still remembering how clear and calm the water was yesterday and more importantly, how slow the bottom fishing was. I was hoping to work the nearshore wrecks again. We got a few bites there yesterday and with a half-day, we didn’t have much range. I had to make it happen relatively quickly.
We started out pretty well. We barely had the full pattern of baits out and hooked our first tuna. I was thinking maybe this was going to be an easy day, – Nope. One bite and one Tuna within the first 10 minutes and not another bite for almost 2 hrs. The Curse of Gage the Bartender seemed to be holding strong.
We were running out of time, as a matter of fact, we were already on overtime. I had one more wreck to fish around and then It would be time to go. On our first pass, we had 4 strikes and hooked 2 blackfin tuna. We got one and lost one, (Sorry Gage). So we were up to 2 Tuna for 4 people. We baited up again and I circled back, time was short, but I had 2 goals. First I needed a couple more fish so they all had enough for dinner and second, I wanted to break the Curse of Gage the Bartender!
We came around again and hooked two more Tuna and YES! we landed them both AND Gage caught one of them. It was not a great day of fishing. But the weather was spectacular, the seas were calm, everybody caught a fish and had enough Tuna for dinner. Oh Yea, we broke the Curse of Gage the Bartender!
I’ll take it