Went out on the Neddie Rose this past weekend in Westport for a 2 day albacore charter.
TL;DR version - Great weather, decent catch, good times.
Long version - Went out to Westport with a few other guys from work and the wife of one of them on Friday (total the boat had 12 pax). Cursed the traffic most of the way down, but still made it with half an hour to spare before check-in time. It was warm and sunny, though fog rolled in about an hour before the boat left.
Motored out Friday night and started fishing at first light on Saturday morning. Slow, slow, slow there at the start. Took a while to even get the first fish, then it was just 1 fish here, 1 fish there. So the capt decided to head south where most of the charter boats were at (about even with the Columbia, 40ish miles off shore). My turn on the trolling rods resulted in a fish, but I don't think we got any on the bait stop attempt that time. Didn't take too much longer though and we started getting a better bite. Then we got a huge baitstop started. It lasted 2.5 hours and put over 30 fish in the boat. Unfortunately I saw none of that action. Literally had the 2 guys on either side of me at one point hook up within 20 seconds of eachother, but not once did I get bit on that bait stop.
Anyway, later in that day on another attempt at a bait stop I finally got bit. I think that was the only live bait fish from that particular stop.
A few more fish here and there, and several blue sharks, and then finally the sun went down and we were done for the day. Most folks slept pretty well that night. 58 or 59 fish for the day.
Sunday before first light and one of the deck hands and a couple other guys got some bait in the water and before we knew they were yelling "FISH ON!". That "bait-stop" yielded 2 more fish. Then we got on the troll. Fish here, fish there, one bait stop that brought in 6-8 fish, but not lighting the world on fire. It was getting close to bingo time and we had 73 or 74 fish on board.
Captain tried hard to find some more fish. Thankfully, he did. Even without a hit on the trolling rods we pulled up for a bait stop. This was probably already after noon and normally he'd have started to head back to port by 10:30-11AM. Anyway, that bait stop kept going until at least 1:30 and produced 16-17 additional tuna. I got 2 of those, so I was stoked to finally be getting a good chunk of the action. My last fish was kind of a weird one. I knew my bait was probably almost if not totally dead, so decided to reel up. Got just enough cranking in to take up the slack and BAM! FISH ON! Mofo seemed to think Japan was looking like a better place to be. Took a crap load of line, probably 150+ yards at one point. I just couldn't seem to gain hardly any line. I'd get a few feet of line, and then he'd take it all back again and then some. Finally was able to get him to start coming back towards the boat. One he was within maybe 50 yards he suddenly popped up on the surface but with his tail facing me. I think at that point he either died or was just too spent to fight anymore, so it was a fairly quick job to real him the rest of the way in. Turns out the hook was in the tip of his nose rather than his mouth, and the line had wrapped around his tail.
Once that bait stop finally ended we had a grand total of 90 fish on the boat. A ways short of the 120 the captain was targeting, but overall not too bad. Weather was phenomenal. Calm seas, light wind, and after some morning mists some good sunshine. I even managed to not chum the whole time.
Now to buy a pressure canner ...
Pics (to prove it happened):
Troll rod score.
Live bait catch.
Sunset on Saturday night.
Me actually not puking over the rail.
Packaged final result ready for the freezer.
