The Tuna are back!
Sorry the delay. Haven't been doing as much fishing as I'd like to lately...so I tried to make up for it today. We pulled out of Duxbury Bay shortly after sunrise. The ride across Cape Cod Bay was pretty smooth - even smoother coming back. We motored up to the SW corner of Stellwagen Bank to find a few birds, a few boats and a ton of whales. Looked pretty fishy, however most of the banter on the radio didn't have too many people catching Charlie.
We decided to troll around a bit while we waited. Member Jim Donovan was trolling a butterfly jig and managed to pick up a 36-38" Striper. He put her in the boat in pretty short order and since we were on the Bank we let her slide back in. After that we worked our way to the SE Corner without much of anything going on, so we made the call to turn South in towards shore. Well we found the birds, more whales and - yes - a few tuna. We hung out there for about a half hour to an hour without any success. The tuna were mixed
in with the whales and were up and down pretty quickly. By the talk on the radio we had just caught the tail end of it. To Race Point we go.
Found a few more birds working the North side of it and managed to boat two healthy Bluefish which we kept for the grill. Also had some nice hits from Stripers...you could see them chasing it down...but we didn't manage to take any.
It was time to call it a day so packed up the boat and started towards home. We didn't get any more than a mile or so from shore when I spotted about a half dozen terns working. Interesting. We pulled back on the throttle and slowly motored up to take a look. We sat for about 15 seconds when - CRASH....a good size tuna slashed through the water. I grabbed my tuna stick and tossed a 3" jig about 70' ....right into where the tuna had crashed. Cranked it about 20 or 30 feet and the ocean opened up underneath it. I'm going to say that the hole it left was a good 5' around. Then I felt it...I was tight. I gave it a couple good tugs and the fish realized it was hooked and took OFF! My drag was set light, so i cranked it down a bit...probably a bit too much. But it ran a good 100 yards off my reel in less than 30 seconds. I was simply hanging on for dear life at this point with thoughts of getting spooled running through my head. And at that point...pop...line snapped...fish gone. It was like hooking a VW bug...not that i've done that before but I've landed 50lb fish on this rod with little problem. By the hole it left and the way it ran, there is zero doubt in my mind that this fish was pretty well north of 100lbs.
So final tally for the day - a good size striper, two nice blues and one big angry tuna is running around with a $8 jig hanging from its lip. Let the madness begin.
We decided to troll around a bit while we waited. Member Jim Donovan was trolling a butterfly jig and managed to pick up a 36-38" Striper. He put her in the boat in pretty short order and since we were on the Bank we let her slide back in. After that we worked our way to the SE Corner without much of anything going on, so we made the call to turn South in towards shore. Well we found the birds, more whales and - yes - a few tuna. We hung out there for about a half hour to an hour without any success. The tuna were mixed
in with the whales and were up and down pretty quickly. By the talk on the radio we had just caught the tail end of it. To Race Point we go.Found a few more birds working the North side of it and managed to boat two healthy Bluefish which we kept for the grill. Also had some nice hits from Stripers...you could see them chasing it down...but we didn't manage to take any.
It was time to call it a day so packed up the boat and started towards home. We didn't get any more than a mile or so from shore when I spotted about a half dozen terns working. Interesting. We pulled back on the throttle and slowly motored up to take a look. We sat for about 15 seconds when - CRASH....a good size tuna slashed through the water. I grabbed my tuna stick and tossed a 3" jig about 70' ....right into where the tuna had crashed. Cranked it about 20 or 30 feet and the ocean opened up underneath it. I'm going to say that the hole it left was a good 5' around. Then I felt it...I was tight. I gave it a couple good tugs and the fish realized it was hooked and took OFF! My drag was set light, so i cranked it down a bit...probably a bit too much. But it ran a good 100 yards off my reel in less than 30 seconds. I was simply hanging on for dear life at this point with thoughts of getting spooled running through my head. And at that point...pop...line snapped...fish gone. It was like hooking a VW bug...not that i've done that before but I've landed 50lb fish on this rod with little problem. By the hole it left and the way it ran, there is zero doubt in my mind that this fish was pretty well north of 100lbs.
So final tally for the day - a good size striper, two nice blues and one big angry tuna is running around with a $8 jig hanging from its lip. Let the madness begin.
