August Al Gauron Halfday

In early August, I was missing summer mack season. I thought that halfday mack trips would end soon. However, blue didn’t show up even in the middle of August and I found a report of halfday mack at Al Gauron catching good size ones. I didn’t think it would be excellent like October but it would be most likely as good as July trip. So I decided to go to Sunday morning trip. Two of my friends also came.

I had three options of rod selection. One was Shimano Sellus 6’8’’, which is the one I usually use. I can use both sabiki and jig only. If I use sabiki and catch big mack, a sturdier rod works better. Shimano Sojourn 7’ was another choice for this purpose. I had used it for scup so I knew it could easily handle triple mack of nice size if I caught. Last one was an ultralight rod. I bought a 5’ Shakespeare micro series rod a week before for squid fishing. It has better stability compared to the 6’ UL one I had. I wondered it would be fun if I used it with a single jig rig. I couldn’t decide when I left home so I loaded all three.

After checking in at the ticket office, I decided to pick up Sellus and micro series. To Sellus, I set a small reel with 12 lb mono line. Originally I spooled 10 lb line with this reel but I checked the strength of the knot of 10 lb mono and found that it held only 5-6 lb of tension. So I re-spooled with new 12 lb mono line, which held up to 9 lb when you tied a swivel. To micro series, I set a mini reel from ice fishing combo with 10 lb braid and 30’’ of 12 lb fluorocarbon leader, which I used for squid fishing.

The fleet used Starfish and Whitestar for halfday trip. We got in Starfish and kept spots around stern. There were slightly less than 40 people on board. I thought the boat would go to the Isles of Shoal but it stopped off the beach in only 20 minutes from the dock. I was a little excited because it meant we could fish more than 3 hours! I started with Sellus with a 1/3 oz mackerel jig. There were a few flurries in the first 30 minutes and fish bit on both jig and sabiki. We got 5-7 pp before 9:00 that was much better than the trip in early July. Meantime the action became slower although the captain did a few small resets. One time there were a few seals turning around and a seal chased the fish I caught when I hooked one. Oh, it was scary!

We had a slow and steady bite by 10:00 so I switched the tackle to UL. I casted a jig and retrieved with a short pitch jig & fall action. Sometimes I could have a bite tens of yards away from the boat. It was super fun to reel in a long distance with a short ultralight rod and a mini reel. I used both vertical jigging around the boat and cast & jig method depending on the action. There were fair bites in 2^nd half and I got a few nice size ones too.

I kept fishing with the UL tackle until the captain called the end at 11:40. I had a sabiki rig in handy in case of big school but didn’t try throughout the trip. It was just a good trip overall. I got 27 including 5-6 larger ones around 14’’. My friends got similar with jig & sabiki rig. Larger fish tasted vary good, almost like fall run!
 

 

My friend took this photo. It is definitely a super shot!