I fished in the Osterville Anglers' Club bluefish tournament this weekend. There were individual prizes for biggest fish, and a boat prize for most releases, so we were trying for both numbers & size.
7:00 AM Saturday found us out on Horseshoe Shoal dragging parachute jigs with wireline, 'cuz that's how this tournament is usually won. After about an hour of slow action, I decided to toss a surface plug off to the side while trolling, just to see if an
ything was up there. I was just about to give up when I saw a fish following my lure to the boat. Next cast I hooked right up to a medium sized bluefish. From then until 3:00 PM we had nonstop action casting every surface plug in the boat (we used them
all up). Color didn't matter & shape didn't matter, but it had to be on the surface, and it seemed to work best to retrieve through the troughs, rather than upsea or downsea. My wife & I ended up releasing 103 fish between us. We weighed in a 9 pounde
r.
Sunday we decided to try the southside of Nantucket in hopes of finding bigger fish. The winds were light out of the north, so the seas were greasy calme. Wstarted out trolling jigs on wire at Miacomet, with no success at all. As we ran east a ways, we
saw a few fish on the surface, stopped and started casting. We moved a couple more times and ended up down by Tom Nevers about a mile offshore, surrounded by hundreds of finning bluefish. Nobody wanted to put a hand in the water for fear of looking lik
e the cattle that wander into the Amazon when piranhas are around. Once again, surface lures were the name of the game. These fish were lazy - you had to spot a fin, cast to it, and pull your lure right over their heads to get their attention. Miss by
five feet and they'd ignore you. We fished until 1:00, released 79 more fish, and weighed in a couple of 13 pounders.
All in all, I'd say that was the most spectacular two days of bluefishing I've ever had.
Frank