Three days of fishing, three days of tuna. Three days without much sleep for Riptide. I'm going to combine these three reports and give highlights from each, since the rest of the stuff is all the same.
Each morning we launched out of PLymouth around 0730. We ran out into the bay under mostly calm conditions. The tuna have been easy to find and the surface feeds ahve been second to none.
Most days you could find huge feeds with a bunch of boats on them. HOWEVER if you looked a little harder and ran a little farther, you could find bigger and better schools of fish and NO OTHER BOATS! We chose to do the latter.
None of my sports had ever landed tuna on spinning gear before. Some had never even seen tuna before. So there were some ups and some downs. We had breathtaking surface strikes and hearbreaking breakoffs.
One epic battle lasted two hours on a fish that I saw 40' away as it circled. The fish was the second tuna my sport had ever hooked and it was every once of 125-150#. After 2 hours of sweat and pain the 50# flouro chafed through from the tunas teeth and set the fish free.
Other battles of note included Brian Casey as guest Capt on the boat today. My charter rescheduled due to a terrbile forcast. They were right in going with the weather because it was a horrible day to be on the water, but the fishing was solid. Casey got tight to a nice tuna that aired out and landed mouth open on his Ocean Lures Swimming Herring. After 30-40 minutes of dealing with one stubborn and angry tuna he got it close enough for me to gaff it.
This fish was allot harder to land than one on standup gear and Casey did a great job of working the fish in. He was smoked afterwards for sure.
But the effort was well worth it!
All of these fish were packed full of sandeels and Pnuts and all of them were a great size class with the smallest fish running 50# and the larger ones over 100#. We even had a surface feed of several hundred pound giants we watched as they ate 15# bluefish on the surface. What an AMAZING site.
The last few days have been spectacular. Lots of tuna landed. Acres and sometimes even MILES of tuna seen breaking. It was great to be a part of so many peoples first tuna.
The new boat continues to impress everyone that fishes on it. Durring the 2 hour fight the new boat and I got to dance. by the end of the two hours I had the big girl moving like a $1000 stripper. She spun and wheeled, backed hard and leaped around. All that was missing was some oil for the gold aftco gaff pole for us to spin around on.
Today the weather went to hell in a handbasket. We were off Race Point when the wind came up and the seas went 4-6's. NW winds at 30+ streaked the bay white. With Casey and Joe in the beanbags and Mike C and I at the helm, we listened as the charter fleet bemoaned the rough ride and slow slog back to the mainland. We all expected a serious butt kicking. What we got was a 27 minute, 40 mph rocket ride to Plymouth. Not only was it a fast ride, it was smooth enough that Joe nodded of twice on the ride back!!! When we got to shore none of use could believe how the boat simply ate up seas of that size at that speed. The boats ride is truely awe inspiring.
When we were putting the smack down on the tuna the lures we used were the new Ocean Lures Swimming Herring in Olive. This has been the hottest lure for us so far this season.
Coming in a close second and always rigged up on at least one rod is the blue Polish Sandeel 9". This lure has been nipping at the heels of the Ocean lures Herring, but it just doesn't cast as well so the OL Herring seems to get more fish.
Overall just a wicked week of fishing in the bay. I'll be OTW for the next two weeks so lets hope the fishing stays red hot.
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