[5th Tuition]

I have an old friend (70+) and had been promising to get him out since opening day. He's a bit unstable on his feet so we needed a calm day. The fishing for me has sucked from Bloody Point and North. I've been dreading taking him (Will) on an all day boat ride for one fish (if I'm lucky).
With reports of more fish South, I invited Will, along with a good friend to act as mate (Mark), for a quick trip today. Winds were calling for light and variable until around 10 am and then slowly picking up from the south to about 10 mph around 1-2 pm.
I fiqured we could run south from breezy and troll until noon and if the winds picked up, we would at least have them to our stern on the run back to Breezy.
Dropped lines just north of 78 and trolled south toward 78A (or is it the other way around?). Anyway; most bait appeared to be in the deeper channel waters, and we picked up one nice fish before the tide quit. At least the skunk was off the boat and Will had his fish. Continued the troll south towards the CP buoy (my destination) during the slack tide.
Once we hit the CP (not literally), we started our west/east pattern. Bait was once again in deeper water, but I thought if we tried some shallower waters (54 ft), we would cover more of the water coloum.
We swung into 45 ft and headed back towards deeper water. Don (Hunter) was way souith of us and had called to say they had been in some nice action earlier. I figured we were due when the tide changed, and about 10:30 we heard a board rod thump. It looked like 65 ft with bait was the ticket. Every pass back on our trail (love that new hds 7) produced a fish.
Mark took the second fish, another nice one. The third was given to Will again (he takes a while to get a fish to the boat); and soon after landing it, I was back on the spot, and we had a fourth hookup.
I tried to give it to Will, but he was too worn out from just bringing in his last fish (so I brought in the first C/R fish of the day).
We made a long loop out into deeper water and reset two lines. As we reached the magical 65 ft mark; yes another rod popped. Will had recovered enough to bring his third fish of the day (our 5th) in for our last fish.
We figured if we ran the trail one or two more times, we might pick up another fish or two, but it was already a great day and memorable for my old friend.
We racked the rods at 12:30 and ran back on flat calm seas to clean some fish at the Breezy table. I expected Will to crash and sleep on the way home, but the adrenalin must have still been pumping.
Once we arrived at my house, we sat on the front porch and relived the day with a couple cold ones. He left with several bags of fresh caught and cleaned rockfish. As he turned his truck around in the driveway, he mentioned he would be up for another trip in the near future.
I silently laughed to myself, knowing that I probably used up all my good karma on this one day to get him on some fish.
5th (Marty)

p.s.
Green tandems off the board were hot today (60 to 90 ft back). Not one deep boat rod produced.