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marvin · #1 08-28-2004, 01:56 PM

Headed south of the Vineyard with Capt. Jeff Smith on Thursday, having met up with Bob Pink at the ramp. Conditions were just perfect- we cruised south in 1" chop, and it was pretty much FAC all day long!

Boated my first (ever) sbft on spinning gear at around 0800, and having gotten on the board, switched to the fly rod. 10 minutes later, BANG, and we were off to the races from there.

We were into small tuna all day long! Can't even count how many were brought to the boat. Most under 20 lbs, but I ended up with one 45 lb. fish on a fly that was probably the most incredible fishing experience I've had yet. I've read magazine stories about days like this, but never in my wildest dreams figured that I'd end up in one of them!

Other treats for the day included fishing with uffdoc, after having only talked to him via posts and email, and seeing him land a dozen or so sbft despite having a broken hand , and watching Steve Moore try to tame first a mako, and then a huge thresher by hand feeding them (practicing for a US remake of the Crocodile Hunter, I think....

)

Thanks Capt. Jeff for a truly amazing day!!

Slamdance · #2 08-28-2004, 08:25 PM

The trick to hand-feeding a 14 to 16-foot thresher is to not feed your hand to it, as I almost did to the blue shark that was hanging under the boat while I went to wash the tuna slime off my hands at the end of the day.

Slamdance · #3 08-29-2004, 09:19 PM

I fished with Bob Pink on his boat. We launched from Falmouth at 0500 and headed south of the Vineyard with some numbers provided by my friend who had been fishing the area heavily the last week or so. Jeff Smith and his crew followed us out. Once we got on our numbers we began to set-up a trolling spread. We got one bonito plug out before it was hit. Fish on! A bluefin was brought up to the boat and dropped at the transom by Bob’s friend, Bob DeBonis. Not a bad way to start the day, having the first hook-up within 5 minutes. Before we could redeploy the “spread”, we got a call from Boyle who had found a trawler who had just gone by and he had fish all around his boat. Capt Shawn Bristow was just up the slick from jaime and was tight to a fly rod fish when we arrived.

We steamed over to where they were and began chumming lightly with butterfish. Within 5 minutes we had hundreds of tuna under our boat. We started out with spinning rods and boated about 5 bluefin before I switched to the fly rod. Two or three casts with a white death and I was hooked up on the 14 weight. Bob Pink and I began trading off the bow with the fly rod. Everyone was tight consistently and we probably landed 6-8 bluefin apiece on the fly. DeBonis decided to try his hand on the fly rod and immediately hooked up to a 10-foot blue shark right at the side of the boat. He fought the fish for about 25 minutes while Pink and I landed a steady succession of tuna at the other end of the boat. Eventually DeBonis broke-off the shark. After the shark got close to the boat the tuna thinned out around us.

We decided to head north to where we could see another dragger. When we got up to the dragger we could see a huge trail of hake floaties behind the boat. We quickly began scooping as many of the floaters as we could and soon had a cooler full of them. As we traveled further behind the dragger the floater were beginning to sink and tuna were beginning to show in the line of dead fish. We began tossing a combination of chunked butterfish and floaters and soon had more bluefn surrounding the boat. We all landed several more tuna on spinning gear and flies, with DeBonis connecting to yet another shark on the fly before we finally ran out of floaters and were running low on Butters. We decided to chase down another Dragger so we could reload our cooler with floaties.

We steamed back east a bit and found another dragger and its corresponding line of dead bycatch which we quickly began scooping into our cooler. Once our cooler was full we hailed Jeff who said he was about 4 miles south of us and had plenty of fish around. Once we found jeff we began tossing the floaters and nailing one fish after another. It got to be so easy that we began playing with the tuna to see what we could get them to not hit. We were double and tripled-up several times with fish ranging from 15 to 35 pounds. At one point I
spotted a small (5 to 6-foot) Mako hanging around the boat. It attacked a tuna I was attempting to land, biting it in half. I left the half-eaten tuna still attached to my plug and hanging off the transom of the boat while I went to get my camera to snap some shots. When I returned to the transom the mako was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t understand why a mako would leave such a tasty morsel dangling off the transom until I spotted a dark figure out of the corner of my eye. A 4 top 16-foot thresher came surfing down a wave right toward the transom and the tasty tuna snack. I ate the whole half of the tuna in one gulp and along with the tuna it also managed to eat my plug! Being hooked to this beast on a spinning rod was not my idea of a good time. I quickly threw the rod to Bob Pink while I tried to snap some photos. The fight lasted all of about 5 minutes before the massive thresher was able to saw through the 50 pound PowerPro. Thank god!

After the close encounter with the big shark we continued a steady pick of tuna with several more doubles and triple hook-ups on fly and spin. Finally around 1500, with bait supplies running as low as our energy, we decide to clean-up and head in. In total there were probably 40+ tuna landed on our boat and an equal number on Jeff’s. As we were cleaning the boat in preparation to leave, I leaned over the gunnel to wash my hands and was quite surprised to see blue shark right under my hands . Lesson learned!

I should have some good slidea nd will post them mid-week.

peter mac · #4 08-29-2004, 09:32 PM

Hey Steve,
OUTSTANDING!!!!!!!!!!!, sounds like an amazing day........heres hoping that the SBFT action contiues to grow over the next week and a half. All the boys are looking forward to this years trip.
Peter Mac