Hi Folks,Its been blowing at least 15 to 20 every day since Columbus day, the last day I was tuna fishing. It was a great day, and we caught a dozen small bluefins in the 42-46 inch range, and managed to get one nice fish just over the legal size limit of 47 inches. Knowing that it would probably be a morning bite, I had my customers on the dock and ready to go at 4:30 am and we headed out to the Regal Sword area. As dawn was breaking, I had my charter looking for the spouts of whales and working birds on the horizon. We managed to stop right on the fish that day and we caught a 45 pound tuna as soon as the gear was in the water. We had whales scattered all around us for about a mile and we could see the spouts and their tails smacking the surface of the water. Bait was marking bright yellow and red on the color depth sounder at about 50 to 80 feet, with an occasional bright red of the whales and tuna inside the bait. Later as the morning progressed vast schools of 30 to 50 pound bluefin tuna were busting out of the water feeding on schools of sand eels. There were literally acres of fish busting throughout the area. Occasionally, the fish were crashing 20 feet from the boat, oblivious to our presence. We tried casting small flashy silver and green jigs at them to no avail, but as we trolled the edges of the breaking schools we would hook up on the small squid rigs. At one point we had 3 fish on at once !
The whale show was the usual bonus to our tuna charter, as they were breaching and tail slapping all around us for the better part of the morning. We had one surfacing whale blow and 'groan' at the same time about 25 feet upwind from the boat as we were trolling along, sending its fish rich exhallation drifting down upon us with the wind.
I did not see or hear of any larger fish taken that day although I was quite busy. Usually, the first week of October is prime time for the giant bluefin to have moved into the area. With the mid water trawlers scooping up the herring as fast as they can, it is preventing the normal and historical migrations of the tuna fish. There is some scattered herring on the bottom starting to show (I heard this week) and the big fish are supposed to be moving in right behind them. Many top fishermen in the area believe that with the smaller tides of the next 2 weeks there will be a showing of the bigger tuna. The boat is ready to go and I will be making an effort as soon as the winds subside. You can't catch em if you don't go !
If you think you wan't to try for a giant call me. We can go with live bluefish for bait or drift with herring and mackeral. With October weather as on again- off again as it is, I will set it up so I can call you a day or so before I think the weather will lay down good enough to go and then we will go the day it is the calmest. At this time of year the weather isn't going to ccoperate with your "day off". We must watch the weather and plan to go when it calms down, usually on only a day or two notice.
Capt. Bruce & "Marilyn S"
