Hi Folks,WOW !, September was a busy month for me, with folks trying to fit their last bass and bluefin fishing charters in for the season. As a result, I didn’t get many fishing reports submitted. There are still plenty of striped bass and bluefin tuna around, but I guess folks just assume that there isn’t time for a charter now that the days are getting shorter or something because the phone stopped ringing. Comparatively speaking, September was the best month of the summer, with great bass fishing right outside my harbor and bluefin tuna starting to feed consistently a mere 4 miles from the dock ! The last trip for bass wasn’t so great, but prior to that we were getting the limit half way into the trip using diamond jigs and dropping to the fish on the bottom in 30 to 55 feet of water.
Most of my recent charters have been bluefin tuna trips, although there have been a few bass trips sprinkled in. We have had at least one school bluefin on every trip we’ve taken and on several occasions in the last week we’ve had the legal limit of two school bluefins. On our best day last week, we had five. I also had a 3 consecutive day giant bluefin tuna adventure in which the client said he wanted to catch and land a giant on standup tackle. He flew in last weekend with his custom standup rod and after some scheduling snafus by the airlines, baggage handling and car rentals, we finally managed to get a late start on the first day. The second day was not good for the entire fleet with only a half dozen fish hooked up. The next day started about the same, s-l-o-w ......! At about 8 am I decided to move the boat to the south end of the fleet and jig up some fresh hook baits. I set out a rigged mackeral, a live cod and the last line to go out had a lively 5 pound pollock set about 60 feet under the balloon. Ten minutes later we were hooked up with the pollock to a 650 pound bluefin that tested our luck thoroughly. The header line was frayed on the initial run, and the flourocarbon leader was frayed and nicked just before the harpoon was thrown! Yet we managed to land our fish, on another slow day when many fishermen better than I, did not even get a bite. I’ll take “lucky” over “good”, any day! Take a look on the Capeshores Charters Facebook page for video of the battle.
This just in ! I received a call from Eric Stewart of the “Hook Up” today informing me of an “epic bite” in which he has landed over 30 school bluefin tuna in the last two days ! (Mon & Tues) Its gonna blow tomorrow and Thursday, but Friday Saturday and Sunday might be some good days to reserve a tuna charter !
Thats the scoop ! Good Fishing !
Capt. Bruce & “Marilyn S”
