Coldest PDO since 1955. Good for salmon/bad for tuna?

Evan B

Bobber Downey Jr.
Staff member
Admin
Maybe stupid question, but what exactly happens when you get spooled? Lose your fly line? Hope your knot at the fly breaks before your knot at the spool?

Part of me thinks it would be a lot of fun to hook a giant, and part of me thinks it just sounds like work.
You find the rod with the most line/beefiest reel, tie the line from that on to the rod with the fish on very securely, then toss the first rod overboard.
 

PhilR

Whale Shark
Forum Supporter
You find the rod with the most line/beefiest reel, tie the line from that on to the rod with the fish on very securely, then toss the first rod overboard.

I was thinking you tie some version of a prusik knot on the outgoing line, but I like this even better. Except for the part where you turn losing $100 of fly line into potentially losing $500-600+ of gear. I guess you consider that the rod is going to break at some point anyway....

ok, I'm leaning more toward I'd like to see this. Oct 5, here we come.
 

Evan B

Bobber Downey Jr.
Staff member
Admin
I was thinking you tie some version of a prusik knot on the outgoing line, but I like this even better. Except for the part where you turn losing $100 of fly line into potentially losing $500-600+ of gear. I guess you consider that the rod is going to break at some point anyway....

ok, I'm leaning more toward I'd like to see this. Oct 5, here we come.
The idea being that you lock the drag down on rod 1 before you toss it in. The fish isn't going to spool rod 2, so it's just a slog after that. Get rod 1 back in, then go back to getting it in on that. I've talked to a few who have pulled it off successfully before, but I'd still have a hard time doing it.
 

Bagman

Steelhead
Maybe stupid question, but what exactly happens when you get spooled? Lose your fly line? Hope your knot at the fly breaks before your knot at the spool?

Part of me thinks it would be a lot of fun to hook a giant, and part of me thinks it just sounds like work.
My leader is rated at 30lbs, my fly line is rated at 50lbs, my backing is rated at 85 lbs. I’m hopping to only loose my leader if I have to break one off. This is the way most of the guys set up their albacore rigs
 

SilverFly

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
Just a quick catch up on surprise PNW, and near PNW, catches this year... besides dozens of PNW dorado:

Last month several 200+ pound bluefin, bigeye, and yellowfin tuna. Off of Fort Bragg CA.

Last week a short billed spearfish out of Westport (as if a cow YFT north of San Fran wasn't pegging the WTF meter).

This week a large striped marlin was caught off of Charleston OR.
 

PhilR

Whale Shark
Forum Supporter
I so wanna get a Striped Marlin, on a stripped fly that was casted to a pack feeding on a school of bait!
Like this!


Yeah, it’s all fun and games until you hook up with a frigate bird. 😀
 

SilverFly

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
I guess I should post this here instead of the Tuna 2022 thread. This image is from yesterday from Shelter Cove/Humboldt County/Northern California. There were 14 caught by the fleet.

View attachment 38873

I just want one, on a fly. No lumbar disc rupturing, no-chance-in-hell of landing monster. Just one, do-able, if painfully, on a 12 or 13wt, about the size of two smaller ones on the left.

Seriously, NorCal bluefin, bigeye and (still blows my mind) yellowfin tuna, became a thing this year. Maybe, just maybe, next year we'll have a few legit BFT foamers to chuck flies at.
 

SilverFly

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
Had some down time to to research what might be going on and found a few relevant science papers. I found one very interesting paper, although about Atlantic Bluefin, is about how the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) is bringing BFT back into UK waters after decades of absence. Of note is referenced BFT bycatch data from the Irish albacore fishery. So perhaps it is not unlikely, the PDO could similarly affect tuna distribution in the NE Pacific:


This paper might shed some light on the NorCal YFT, and potentially some of the other weirdness (like Kona billfish in Westport WA).

 

RRSmith

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
The beat goes on - this bluefin was caught at Cordell Banks out of Bodega Bay (North of San Francisco) on November 20th. He was trolling a Nomad Madmac and it taped at 77" - about 250 lbs.

1669159535819.png
 

SilverFly

Life of the Party
Forum Supporter
The beat goes on - this bluefin was caught at Cordell Banks out of Bodega Bay (North of San Francisco) on November 20th. He was trolling a Nomad Madmac and it taped at 77" - about 250 lbs.

Turkey Week NorCal BFT. And a legit cow no less. Amazing.

I'd like to interpret this as a large scale ecosystem change similar to what happened in SoCal when the bluefin returned ... what was it? 15, 20 years ago?

What I'm getting about the NorCal fishery this year, besides the mind-blowing cow Yellowfin and Bigeye catches, is the persistance of large tuna North of, not just Point Conception which has been a traditional hard line for large tuna and other warm water species, but the entire CA coast to the Oregon border.

At the very least this is a clear change from the fleeting/transitory encounters of large tuna in these waters in recent memory.
 
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