Rode shotgun with Mooningu out of MB for some prospecting in US waters.
Foggy and a little bumpy made it hard to find kelp.
Nothing spectacular fish wise, just bonitO on the troll.
One interesting thing was our encounter with a blue whale. I was at the wheel and all of a sudden the thing surfaced about 100 yds straight off our bow. It was the most incredible creature I've ever seen. It must have been at least 100' long.
I grabbed my camera and before I could get it out of the case I hear Dave yelling at me that we have a double hookup going. I was oblivious, I was so focused on the sight in front of me that I didn't even notice the clickers screaming on the trollers.
Heard some radio chatter of others getting some YTs that were with the whale(s).
A little while later we found out what brought big blue to the neighborhood.
We ran across some puddling bait and started seeing these big brown patches of water. As we passed over one I could see that it wasn't fish but krill. I grabbed the bait net and got a healthy pass off the surface. Trippy little things. I should have filled a couple of 5 gallon buckets with these things.
Saw these things out there too. The looked like large dolphin but swam and behaved like orcas. Does anyone know what they are? Sorry best pic I could get.
About 2:00 we were out by the North 9 and saw a large ship on the radar a couple miles ahead of us. Radar painted another small vessel up ahead to. We finally spotted the ship in the distance and a minute later we see a skiff that is crossing our path about 1/3 of a mile ahead. Then it starts to turn and then it's coming right at us. Dave and I are going WTF is this joker doing.
Turns out to be a RIB from the Navy. They stated that they were conducting military operations and told us we needed to leave the area and go at least a mile away to the north and 3 if we wanted to go the other way.