So after two weekends and 18 hrs of trolling and no salmon I was ready to try fishing them a different way, so I talked my tuna/salmon Guru Mike Doering into coming out on my rig to show me the ropes for mooching the salmons. We left S.B. harbor at 6:15am, the original plan was to run down to rincon point and look for bait but we stopped short just inside the gap where there were tons of birds working, and after a mini seminar on rigging the baits we were mooching! It wasn’t too long when Mike hooks the right kind only to have it pull the hook (doh!) So after a few more missed bites we move out to a 150’ of water in the middle of another smaller bird school, and after catching a few big cuda I get bit on the way down at 65 pulls, and this fish was acting weird, pretty much swam to the boat and with a little coaxing in the net it went and we are on the board with a nice little 13lbr, after that it went dead so we joined the fleet out at the top of the upper four, we fished that till about 11:00ish for nada, although I did see a few fish boated by fellow moochers. After that we went back in to the area we got the first fish and set up on similar scratches on the meter, about 15 min later Im bit but it doesn’t stick so I drop my other rig down to the same depth and not 60 seconds later Im on! and at 11:30 another 13 pounder goes in the box with out incident! After a hour or so we see the birds going nuts again inside of us so we go in to take a look and don’t find much initially but as we start to motor back out I find a bait ball so massive that it blanks out meter! But the only thing we pick of it was more cudes, ( did I mention I got a 9lb cude today?) Anyways we decide to go back out to the area where we got the other fish, and find the same scratches at 50ft down we had earlier, and at 1:15 one of Mikes rods gets bit and doesn’t take, then all the sudden one of my rods is bendo in the holder! And since I already had my limit I tell mike to take it! And must that fish was amazing! That fish came flying up to the surface and started jumping like a marlin! Man I tell you that fish was hauling a$%! After about 5min or so Mike swims it into the ready and waiting net, and a 22lbr goes in the box! Oh and Mike got the privilage (spelling) of devirginatizing my new calcutta 7615ma rod with trini 12 with that fish! At we 1:30 we call it quits to get a leg up on the washdown crowd. We got all three fish on frozen chovies, but we got more bites on the frozen deans but I think due the size of the deans (7-9in) we couldn’t get the fish to stick, 2 fish were caught at 50pulls and one at 65. Also the weather was absolutely incredible! Very small swells and very light breeze, water temp was 53.5 in the am and 55.5 in the pm…..Larry

P.S. Mike if you read this, thanks again!