Reports
- 160 lb Bluefin and 7 Yellowfins on the Hooked Up II today
- Tuna Fishing Report for August 1st-5th
- Outfished by Center Consoles But Still a Great Day
- Blue Fin Tuna Fishing Report
- Updated report on the Hooked UP II
- Tuna report on the Hooked Up II
- 25 Yellowfin, TRIED for Bluefin, Marlin-Big Eye on 55 Hooked Up II
- A very detailed report on new world class jigging-popping tackle on the 55 Hooked Up II
- My thoughts on spinners versus conventionals for jigging those 80-175 lb. Bluefins
- August 24, 2008 Report for the past few days.
6/23/2008 Not a good report from Wilmington yesterday as the water warmed up to 77 degrees
2008-06-23
That great yellowfin bite may be coming to a quick end now as we fished the Wilmington yesterday from about 5:30 am until around 4:00 pm on a very long day troll trip. We had lots of little skippies and some rat yellowfins early in the morning in 72.7 degree water right up by the tip of the Wilmington in 60-90 fathoms with tons of bait everywhere. The boat right by us got a couple of nice 60 lb fish around 7:00 am but after that it was all short rat yellowfins with none over 30 inches for them as well as us. We worked our way down the east wall to the notch and out into 500 fathoms where there had been 72-73 degree water earlier in the morning with a pretty good bite for some boats in the cooler water but when the this piece of warm water moved in (up to 77 degrees) in just a few hours, that was pretty much it for every boat I talked to yesterday. Some boats went over to the west wall and found a little cooler water around 75 degrees but did not hear of any type of tuna bite over there either. We tried for a little while looking for a marlin bite in the 77 degree water out to about 400 fathoms and this piece of water looked pretty decent for marlin fishing from I determined yesterday but it really shut down the tuna fishing for many of us yesterday afternoon.
With this warm water moving in,the Mahi-Mahi bite should be getting real good and we had one trolling, plus we found one pot that had some on it and bailed a few with spinners before leaving to go back to Cape May. There were lots of lobster pots out there on the east wall so I expect with this warm water it will be attracting mahi-mahi over the next few days. Overall in my opinion it looked like some pretty decent white marlin water but with no hard edge. I am not too encouraged the great tuna bite will continue out in the Wilmington and hope I am wrong about this. Almost all the boats that I know of that had great trips the last week or so fished the cooler water around 71 degrees but that water is now 75 degrees or more and not one boat we talked to yesterday could find water anywhere near that by early afternoon as the warm water that pushed in pretty well covered up the whole east side of the Wilmington including the east side flats.
PS: I might add we tried every known spread known to mankind looking for the bigger tuna over 40 lbs which included at least 10 or so different colors and types of spreader bars, tuna clone lures, small chuggers, Sea witchs, Ilanders with all sizes of ballyhoo from small to large mediums both naked and with lures in front of them and nothing worked for us when it came to raising any yellowfin over 25 lbs. I trolled from 5-7 knots and changed colors all day long plus every other trick I know to find of but it did not work for us as all we could raise were the rats.