Our good friend and long time customer, Leo Rodriguez, joined us for what would be a fantastic day of fishing. Leo was accompanied by a couple co-workers and they were looking forward to getting some action as well as bringing home some fresh fish for dinner. The bait fishing was very good and before long the L&H was headed offshore to see what we could find. Right away, the guys caught a couple nice blackfin tuna on artificial lures and I knew we were headed in the right direction. A short time later, Travis spotted a frigate bird a few miles away and I sped up a little bit to close the gap between us and the bird. As we approached the frigate, we got attacked! Every line we had out got bit and we now had more fish on than we had anglers (always a good problem to have)! Minutes later, nice size tuna were coming over the rail! We had found a big school of tuna, but at the time I did not know how big the school would turn out to be! After boating all the fish we had on, I pushed the throttles up and tried to catch back up to the school. Jim and Trav quickly reset the lines and before we got to the heart of the school, every rod was hooked up again! This time, I left my perch in the tower and climbed down the ladder to the cockpit to join the fun. I grabbed a live bait and tossed it out to the side and in seconds a tuna ate it. Jim and Trav followed suit and we began hooking tuna (a mix of blackfin and skipjack) as fast as the bait hit the water! The fish we literally swimming all around the boat! We caught them on everything we used and Leo went to the bow and began hooking up on his fly rod! For what seemed like an eternity, the school of hungry tuna stayed with the L&H as we drifted along with the current. Finally, by looking at the amount of fish in our icy hold I knew we had more than enough fish for everyone and we had to stop catching them! We caught so many tuna in such a short period of time that I decided to break the cardinal rule in fishing...never leave fish to find fish! This, however, was an exception because we had A LOT of tuna and Leo wanted to try for some mahi! Several miles further offshore I spotted a nice weed line. Only minutes after reaching the possible mahi highway we found a nice school of fish! By now the guys had recovered from the tuna blitz and were rested up enough to go back to work on the mahis! They were nice size mahi mahi and again we had more fish hooked up than we had anglers to reel them in. Everyone did great and now the fishbox was reaching capacity. After finishing the mahi mahi school we resumed our hunt and continued to pick away at fish all afternoon! Everybody agreed to head in a little early and when we reached the dock, one of the other charter boats had just finished unloading their catch. With only a few fish for the entire day, Leo told me he did not want to embarrass the other boat, but I told him not to worry and that he should be proud of his catch!! The boys started throwing the fish on the dock and they just kept coming and coming and coming and coming... With great teamwork, the best crew around and being ready and prepared for anything, the L&H ended up with fifty-one (51) blackfin and skipjack tuna and a nice bunch of mahi mahi! We cut up a lot of fish for Leo and his guys and he even took a bunch of tuna to give away to friends! The fish that were left, my wife canned for us and not a single fish went to waste! It was a great day for Leo and everyone on the L&H!!!
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