75# toothy Bluefin on the Eclipse

[Zfish03]

I stepped off my plastic battleship to get it while the getting is good!

With the bluefin ban lifted, hit the pens with the rest of the fleet on a 1.5 day in hopes of some bluefin. Kick off an early morning start with some yellowfin. Every bait was getting annihilated but anchovies seemed to work the best. 1/0 hooks and 25-30lb test did the trick.
At some point in the morning I somehow offended the Captain, "M", when he noticed I liked to use Spro #50-80 swivels instead of tying Albright knots for my fluro to braid. I do this because they're so small fit through the guides, incredibly strong, and I can use a 6-10ft leader that can be easily switch out to a larger or smaller # line. After that sentence, Captain "M" basically gave me a "what the F**K do I know? I'm only the captain of fishing boat" then called me an idiot before he walked off. Not really sure what to make of that customer service experience, so I kept fishing
I heard that the bluefin caught the past week were deeper under the YFT in the mornings and evenings, so I decided to throw on a sardine with a 3/4oz rubber core on my 65# braid/40# fluro with the dreaded Spro swivel. Within 5 minutes I'm onto a big fish. About an hour later a huge bluefin comes up! The first gaff attempt was a swing and a miss, I'm sweating now! The just as the second attempt hits home a huge hammerhead comes up from under the boat and bites the tail off as they try to pull the fish on deck. Crazy!
We get limits of YFT the rest of the day and I managed to nab one of the few dorado caught too(There was a wide open YFT bite at the stern and I decided to check out the bow with a megabait. Turns out there was 5-10 dodo's swimming around the bow with nobody fishing there! I guess sometimes it pays to skip some of the chaos at the stern)
All in all, it was a fantastic trip. Everyone caught fish, I got a trophy, good food, and the deckhands were on it.
One thing I really didn't enjoy witnessing, and I hate to write about this, is poor customer service from the captain. Multiple times he would be literally screaming at people during the YFT bites. We had some inexperienced people on the boat that were doing their best to keep up with the fast paced shuffle, many of who were older gentlemen. Tangles are inevitable. Plenty of fish landed already too. I talked to a few of them who literally sat down because they were sick of being belittled and screamed at...not cool. Putting people on fish is great, but being respectful and fun to fish with is another aspect of customer service.
End of the trip, my bluefin was the largest caught by atleast 40-50lbs. The captain smirks at me and says it was shark bit so I don't get the jackpot...even though it was gaffed. Even the deckhands seemed uncomfortable with his ruling. But, his boat his rules I guess. I was gonna pay my $20 galley tab and give the rest of the jackpot to deckhands anyways, those guys earned it. Ouch.
It was a memorable trip to say the least. Sorry for the novel, on with the fish porn.

-The tail-less weight at the docks was 69.8!