Dana point offshore report 9/6

[YakDout]

Launched at the harbor around 6am with plans to head out and look for some tunis. I was expecting the line at the barge to be long considering how busy the boat ramp was, but Mike and I picked up a nice scoop of sardines within 15 minutes. The offshore wind was up a bit which was a good thing because we were cruisin out. Averaging 4 MPH. At about the one mile mark offshore we start getting bit on the flylined dines we have behind us. Bone here, Bone there, I picked up a hammerhead shark around that same area. I knew it was a shark right away because of feel of the line rubbing. Broke me off eventually. OH well, I heard hammerhead doesn't taste real good anyways (kinda gamy)

Kept making our way out and ran into birds diving here and there but only to leave the area rather quickly. Stopped on quite a few paddies but no one home on anything besides bait. And lots of it. Gave a couple paddies the long soak and a couple pieces of chum. No boilers, nada. We hit the 7.5 mile mark pretty quick and decided to make a turn to the north around 10am. More paddies, more nada. Around noon we decided to make the turn back towards shore. We stopped on some of the nicest paddies on the way in thinking, this thing is too big and too good to not have fish under it. But same thing, nobody. We hit a large pod of porpoise and were hoping there would be some YFT mixed in but no biters. When we came back inshore, ended up a bit north of salt creek. Drug around for halibut for a little bit. Had a couple serious raked baits and I dont think I will ever send a bait to the bottom without a trap hook again. Over to headlands kelp around 2pm and drifted almost all the way back to the harbor before we decided to call it. Put in around 20 miles maybe a little more OTW and it really wasn't too bad actually. I think my next trip out will be an offshore one as well as I enjoy the open ocean more than being next to land.