Tuna report on the Hooked Up II

2009-07-12

We flat out overran the best of the Bluefin bite today. We went farther south than where I fished on Saturday's trip as I thought we might find some of the 125-150 lb class BFT that had been caught last weekend off the Northern VA Coast on the well known lumps and hills down that way. We ran 60 plus miles from Cape May hoping to get on the bigger BFT and then planned to move offshore after we got our two legal BFT's to target Yellowfins, Mahi and Wahoo. Well, it did not work out this way as the best bite was just a couple of micro seconds from where we fished on Saturday. There were a dozen or more of boats which were almost all from ports in Maryland and quite a few boats did quite well with tuna with at least a few in the 150 lb class. These boats were all mostly North and a little East of us and not all the boats got their two BFT's or even one but it was very good for most of the boats up where we fished on Saturday. Of course, I heard boats running and gunning chasing scallop boats but did not hear of any one hooking up this way but that does not mean some slobs were not caught behind a scalloper the last few days somewhere. We lost three of my best Fish Finder Lures from North Carolina due to Wahoo bites and had to put in a next day shipment order this morning to stock up for the Mid-Atlantic Tuna Tournament. We also pulled the hook on a long rigger bite on a very nice tuna and boated a decent Mahi. We saw so many tuna on the bottom we stopped and chunked some butterfish and jigged for a while and had two hits on the jigs as they approached the bottom but the lines did not come tight. We fished our butterfish down around the bottom with no hits at all and we wished we had brought some Sardines along with the butters but our marina did not stock Sardines as of yesterday and we will have to look into this shortly.
We did hear of two BFT caught by floating dead baits back up on the surface without weights by a couple of chunkers much farther North from where most of the chunk fleet was. We did slow troll to the North towards the general area where the good bite was but stayed outside the fleet by a mile or so working another hill that came up from almost 165 feet of water to about 133 feet. There are a few hills like this around where we fished but these locations have no names that I am aware of but they sure would not be hard to find with a good offshore map. In retrospect I should have just returned to the area where we fished on our last trip which was quite a bit closer to Cape May as when the sun came up the water we started fishing in was ugly green and 71 degrees and a far cry from the clear warm water we fished in on Saturday. When we finally ended up around our Northern locations around where the fish were being caught, the water was 75 degrees and was much prettier. Win some and lose some but we did put in an honest 14 hour day and tried chunking, jigging and trolling but without the results I had hoped for. I heard of some nice fish caught by the chunkers but no confirmed fish boated on a jig but that does not mean there were not any caught the last few days on jigs but most of the boats I keep in contact with have been mostly trolling. It still is hit or miss to some degree as I know some very good tuna fishermen that did not even get one bite today and these same boats were slaying them this time last year. I am excited to start Wahoo fishing as well in that warmer cleaner water where we had the bite-offs yesterday along with the potential of a few Yellowfins out a little farther starting in about 220-250 feet of water which is not very far from where we fished.