Well, after not being able to locate a pot that we dropped on Sunday, July 13th, we went back out to try and locate it. Got to the launch around 1630 and on the water at the pot around 1700. It must have been kelp or something else dragging the buoy under because the pot was EXACTLY where I had marked it on my GPS. We pulled it up and it had 2 nice sized keeper dungies inside (along with 5 or so females). We didn't really want to deal with just 2 so we just threw them back for next time. While we were out on the water, we figured that we would wet the lines for an hour or so before we had to get back.
Dropped lines in the water around 1730 and started to make our troll. I went with a similar set up that caught me fish during the weekend (green/glow flasher and "hootchie killer") and my buddy used his "old standby classic" for blackmouth (green/mylar flasher and a cookies and cream kingfisher light). Of course I started laying into the sand dabs right away, with 2 on in the first 20 minutes and my buddy got one as well. Made sense that we were catching them because we are still in "blackmouth mode" where we stay within 5'-15' of the bottom. Basically, we drop balls til they hit the deck and troll from there. The blowback always seems to keep it perfectly off the bottom and in the zone.
After 20 minutes of trolling, we hit a little shelf and my buddy started dragging his ball. He brought it up 20' to keep it off the bottom and as soon as he did, the rod started dancing. We thought that maybe he was still hitting bottom, but the rigger wasn't moving an inch, and we knew what that meant. The fight was on, and this little guy had some power to it. We got it to the boat and wouldn't you know, it had that pesky extra fin. After a quick pic, we sent it on its way. We didn't measure it because we wanted to get it back as soon as we could, but if I had to guess I would say that it was keeper sized. After we released the cookie nookie, we trolled for another 30 minutes or so. We each got one more dab and called it a day.
So, overall not a bad day. We were able to get our pot back (over $150 saved!) and were even able to lay into a fish. Not bad for fishing less than an hour.

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