TUNA....you guys don't know what you are missing!
So....my annual 3 day tuna trip was a monster success again. First stop we made was at a tackle shop on the Cape where my buddy dropped $380 on a killer rod / reel jigging combo to toss jigs at the tuna instead of bait fishing.
We left the dock Wednesday at 7AM and were offshore and trolling by 2 PM. First fish came on the troll and turned out to be the biggest fish and the pool winner....about a 70 lb yellowfin. We picked a couple more on the troll and set up on anchor for the night bite. Fishing on night 1 was sloooooow with less than 10 fish caught. My buddy jigged hard and managed to get 3 of the 10 on his brand new jiggin rod. We also managed two swordfish on night 1.
Day 2 we go back on the troll and fish hard all day with only 3 or so more tuna caught by late in the day...............so i am fishless at this point and resigned to the fact that maybe this trip may be a bust and that's ok since the last two years were awesome and every trip can't be a monster success.......so just as it starts to get dark we have a double hookup with 2 rods going off on the troll........i look way off the port side and see a marlin jumping and another one off the bow.......turns out these were the 2 fish hooked and 1 was dropped right off the bat so we still have 1 on.........and it was the one way off the port side............as the guy is fighting the fish it runs under the boat and puts on an aerial show on the starboard side and then got hung up under the boat.....eventually we got it loose, landed it, took a few pics and released it.
So now it's dark, we are anchoring up and after a day and a half of sleeping an hour here or there i decide to sleep until a fish hits the deck that night so if it was a late bite i would be awake. By 8 PM my buddy wakes me uo and says they're biting.......i went out, dropped my bait down 60 pulls and within 5 minutes had one on.....landed that, dropped back down and had another one within 5 more minutes and then another within 20 more minutes or so........the bite dies down, it's 12 PM so i take another quick snooze and wake up around 2 AM to the sound of a tuna slapping it's tail repeatedly on the deck.......my buddy is still asleep so i grab his jigging rod and head to the bow where along with 3 or 4 other guys we hooked tuna consistently for 3 straight hours.......i had at least 9 hooked up and landed another 5 fish....all on this little jigging rod!
What a riot......my back has been sore for 2 days!!!
Next year some of you guys should try and make it.....it is a 100 foot party boat and usually takes about 30 guys.....this was rescheduled due to a storm on the original date so we only had 24 guys...just perfect!
Each of the last 3 years we have hammered the tuna.......and enjoyed 3 days offshore!