Its4Reels!-Parker23
Well-known member
Left Shelter Island at 3AM and loaded up with some pretty mediocre bait with a plan to run to some numbers just NW of the West Butterfly. George (Accurate Reels) Cardenas, Mike, Junior and I were anticipating a run in with some Albies. Ride out was bumpy and we stopped on some paddies at grey light for nada, made our way to the numbers and there were no signs of life and more empty paddies. By this time it’s around 10AM and the weather was settling down a bit. I say let’s go for the Cortez and everyone agrees and off we go. The further west we went the nicer it got. Two of us the in the tower and we are running at 32-35mph. We are starting to see life, dolphins, flying fish, birds but no breaking fish. Trolled through the dolphins and hit dozens of nice paddies and NADA. Zip. Zero. Nobody home. We finally make it to the edge of the bank and it’s like another world out there. Structure in the middle of nowhere. My Furuno is actually reading the bottom. We see the buoy just off of Bishop Rock and it is just loaded with bull kelp. Start a drift through the kelp and drop some slab sardines (very few live ones at this point) on dropper loops and it is instant bendo. Nice grade of goats to about 10lbs. Even the females, which were released, were 3-5lbs. It was pretty much a fish a cast for the first 30 minutes. Here is Mike with a nice Cortez sheephead:
Junior with a pair of goats (Bishop Rock buoy in the background:
There were huge schools of mini macks and mini Spanish macks which I proceeded to catch with the sabiki rigs. It was getting late and we were 96.7 miles from Pt. Loma with just enough gas to get us home. Maybe. As we start to head off the bank we spot some yellowtail feeding in a paddy in just 67 feet of water. Yes they were feeding in the paddy, their tails and head were pushing bait through kelp. Baits in the water and I get picked up and swing and miss and bring in my bait with a crushed head. We drifted past the paddy a couple of times and had a couple of yellows show right behind the boat and all we had to show for it was a bonito caught by Mike. Now we really had to go and we headed off and only stopped 4-5 times on paddies for, you guessed it, NADA. First 40 miles conditions were awesome the last 56 miles very bumpy. It took us 6 hours to get back. We were beat. According to the Yamaha Fuel Management gauge we traveled 287 miles and burned 147 gallons. 3 gallons to spare is cutting closer than I would have liked but we made it. Even though we didn’t get any albies, yellows or dorado we still had a blast and just to be able to say I took my own boat to the Cortez Bank feels good. BTW, we did hear someone call out that they were leaving a wide open bite but George could not pick up the numbers. We called out to them for 30 minutes desperate for those numbers but they could not hear us. We will slay them next time.
Junior with a pair of goats (Bishop Rock buoy in the background:
There were huge schools of mini macks and mini Spanish macks which I proceeded to catch with the sabiki rigs. It was getting late and we were 96.7 miles from Pt. Loma with just enough gas to get us home. Maybe. As we start to head off the bank we spot some yellowtail feeding in a paddy in just 67 feet of water. Yes they were feeding in the paddy, their tails and head were pushing bait through kelp. Baits in the water and I get picked up and swing and miss and bring in my bait with a crushed head. We drifted past the paddy a couple of times and had a couple of yellows show right behind the boat and all we had to show for it was a bonito caught by Mike. Now we really had to go and we headed off and only stopped 4-5 times on paddies for, you guessed it, NADA. First 40 miles conditions were awesome the last 56 miles very bumpy. It took us 6 hours to get back. We were beat. According to the Yamaha Fuel Management gauge we traveled 287 miles and burned 147 gallons. 3 gallons to spare is cutting closer than I would have liked but we made it. Even though we didn’t get any albies, yellows or dorado we still had a blast and just to be able to say I took my own boat to the Cortez Bank feels good. BTW, we did hear someone call out that they were leaving a wide open bite but George could not pick up the numbers. We called out to them for 30 minutes desperate for those numbers but they could not hear us. We will slay them next time.
