Hoping to find the jumping sharks again, we headed due west from our anchorage cove, then a little north when we spotted Frigate birds working. It turned out they were on a huge meatball, which split into several meatballs of sardines being attacked by small and large skipjack not to mention the occasional Grey whale. The larger skipjack were hitting from below, so you had to let the lure sink for a 30 count before starting the retrieve if you wanted to fight the larger ones. Susan's spinning rod made them lots of fun.
After one particularly long fight, the birds and bait had moved a couple miles west, so we decided to continue south. Along the way I happened to notice a large bait ball on the bottom in 240 ft of water. We marked them on the GPS and relocated the spot to set up a drift. We both dropped jigs down and ended
up catching mackerel about the size of the jigs. Hoping for that elusive yellowtail I quickly
put on a big butterfly jig, 10 OZ this time. On the next retrieve from the bottom, crank-
ing the lure madly up through 100ft or so, the
jig was nailed and whatever it was started
hauling line right back to the bottom. The fish
was fighting different than I had experienced
so far; it had a strong slower tail thump, but
the fight was pretty much up and down, very little movement to the side. I knew it was something different. My suspicion was rewarded when the fish finally reached color depth and the yellow tail became obvious.
