Wahoo, Yellowfin, and da Tax Man

I went fishing on Sunday with my buddy Jon and a friend of Jon's from San Diego named Jim Furlong. Jim's a Navy SAR (search and rescue) evaluator out here to do the yearly SAR evaluation for Jon's squadron and we always try to get him out on the water for some fishing while he is here. Sunday's weather called for an acceptable marine forecast, but some rain. Some rain turned into a lot of rain, in fact, it rained most of the day. We put the boat in at the Hagatna Boat Basin about 6 am and headed North. We got out just before John Eads on the Lucky Strike and ran up to double reef and put the lines in. Its never good to follow John Eads, cause he'll catch all the fish in front of you! We trolled all the way up to Ritidian without a solid strike. John Eads picked up a wahoo following us...go figure. Just after we rounded Ritidian, we had the first knock down, wahoo on. Jim made quick work of the wahoo and had it at the side of the boat in no time. But Mr. wahoo had plans of his own and took off as soon as he saw the boat and got ahead of us. I was a little sluggish on the throttle and it took me a sec to catch up to the bastard. Just as we caught him, he gave a good head shake that coincided with the boat rocking and the line going slack. That was all he needed and he was off. We continued along towards Pati Point and got another wahoo knock down, but he came unbuttoned just after hooking up. Just as we got to Pati Point the port outrigger goes off and we have our third wahoo on! This time, all goes well and Jon flops a ticked off wahoo into the cockpit of the boat. He got a quick attitude adjustment with the fish bat and then we got him in the fish box. We made a couple more passes over the spot where we hooked up with the wahoo, but didn't get any more action, so we decided to start heading out to 45 bank. We plowed through the washing machine at Pati Point, which was kicked up to the 4-6 ft range and then continued on to 45. We got out there and immediately after passing over the bank we found a flock of birds working a school. We switch out our wahoo spread for a tuna spread and go to work. It wasn't long before...bam..bam..bam..triple knock down! All three of us jump into action. Jon grabs the starboard flat line, Jim the stinger, and me the port rigger. Jim's gets off right away, so I let him take the port rigger which is tearing off line. Jon gets his fish, a nice ~10 lb yellowfin into the boat and immediately bleeds him. Jim's fish is a beast and tearing off line like crazy. I started backing down the boat so that he could make some progress. The battle went on and on. It started raining...then there was driving rain, then more rain; you get the picture. The whole time Jim kept battling the beast from below. As he started to close in on the fish, it came to the surface. Tuna don't come to the surface, so we were hoping to see a marlin start jumping. To our disgust, it was just a shark! A big ole shark that was foul hooked in the chest with a 10/0 SS hook! After several tug-o-wars, Jon was able to get the lure back and cut the shark off. Good thing too, cause the lure was our MVP for the day. It hooked two wahoo and the yellowfin that got sharked; it's pictured above. After we were done with the shark, we headed back to the bank and tracked down the birds again. We fished them for about another hour without any strikes, so we headed back towards Pati Point to see if we could get some more wahoo. Didn't get any more wahoo, but we did catch two Kawa Kawa at Ritidian Point. We trolled all the way back to Tanguisson and then pulled the lines and ran back to the boat basin. We had the boat out of the water at about 1630. We rinsed the motors, unloaded the gear, and then headed home. I cleaned the two Kawa Kawa and had some fresh sashimi; very good eats! Last night the boys and I went to Jon and Connie's and had fresh wahoo fish tacos and yellowfin sashimi. It was delicious! It was good to see the wahoo back in town, I haven't caught one for quite some time. As usual, it was a blast to get out on the water with some great friends! Thanks Jon and Jim for getting out and doing some fishing!