By Captains John Sowerby & Diana Stover-Sowerby - Charter Boat HOOKED UP II

I would like to begin with a little bit about our history of inshore fishing for bluefin tuna. We first started fishing for bluefin out of Lewes, DE and Ocean City, MD over 20 years ago. We usually began fishing for bluefin in late June or early July, chunking with butterfish in the famous Jack Spot area along with what seemed like the whole Ocean City fleet. We rarely trolled because we found trolling with artificial lures such as feathers or cedar plugs produced mostly small, football -sized bluefin, while chunking produced fish in the 50- to 80-pound range.

During this time, we began experimenting to see if we could find any bluefin around the unnamed lumps that are on most charts to the north of the Jack Spot. We also thought that by trolling we could cover more lumps plus look for bait that might hold tuna much like the Jack Spot. So we tried trolling using all the traditional early season methods with artificial lures up in the water column but we did not have much success until we made one major change in our trolling spread.
The change we made was to start using cedar plug daisy chains close in the wash behind our boat as teasers and behind them Ilander Trackers with medium ballyhoo. It did not seem to matter what color Ilander we used as long as the bally did not spin or wobble. We rigged all our ballyhoo using standard pin rigs on regular 180-pound test mono leaders. I forget now what size and type hook we used then, but in recent years we've used the 8/0 7691 DT Mustad southern style tuna hook for summer bluefin trolling.
combinations of these colors all worked fine on Blue/White was their favorite Ilander color and probably produced more bluefin in the 45- to 70-pound range than any of the other colors although purple, black, red, blue and had no problem getting bites at that speed. many days. We trolled at around 6.2 knots and this was long before we started using planers and the "way, way back" technique we now use.
We didn't have bluefish problems trolling back then, possibly because the baits were up near the surface. Quite a few lumps north of the Jack Spot held bait - mostly sand eels - and bluefin tuna, but never in large concentrations. We had little success chunking these lumps but were able to catch nice bluefin on the troll over the years.

THEN AND NOW

Things have really changed for us over the years when it comes to fishing for inshore bluefin. One change was back in the late 90's after we started fishing in the winter for giant bluefin out of Morehead City, NC and learned the technique of using #24 and #32 planers for trolling giant bluefin. We used the large 9-inch Ilanders with large or horse ballyhoo on 10/0 and 11/0 7691 Mustad hooks with heavy mono leaders as there were lots of bluefin around and they were not especially leader shy back then.
Based on our experience in North Carolina, we started using the same method of trolling with planers up north in the summer months even though the bluefin are much smaller than the Morehead City tuna. We found that getting the troll baits down deeper in the water column worked off the New Jersey and Maryland coast as well as in North Carolina. Once we started trolling with planers, we began to catch bluefin over 100 pounds on a pretty regular basis.
We now start our first inshore trips of the season for bluefin out of Cape May trolling these same unnamed lumps. We had a great inshore bluefin season in 2007 beginning with our first troll trip in early July when we had a good number of bluefin between 46 and 53 inches using #32 planers with two baits "way, way back".

These unnamed lumps and hills don't produce the size and numbers of bluefin tuna as the more traditional locations such as such as Massey's, the Ham Bone, Sausages, Hot Dog or behind a scallop boat. They do however offer some pretty decent inshore tuna fishing with bluefin up to 80 pounds and without the wall to wall boat congestion found at the more popular locations. One of the reasons we prefer trolling is that a hill may have fish one day but not the next, yet within a few miles we often are able to find

These unnamed lumps and hills don't produce the size and numbers of bluefin tuna as the more traditional locations such as such as Massey's, the Ham Bone, Sausages, Hot Dog or behind a scallop boat. They do however offer some pretty decent inshore tuna fishing with bluefin up to 80 pounds and without the wall to wall boat congestion found at the more popular locations.
One of the reasons we prefer trolling is that a hill may have fish one day but not the next, yet within a few miles we often are able to find a new hot spot on another hill where the bait moved. By trolling we cover more ground and increase our chances of finding the fish. We have found that day scallop boats will shut down a location once they start working a hill due to the bottom disturbance they cause which causes the bait to move to another location. When we see a day scalloper, we pretty much avoid trolling anywhere near where they are working and move to other lumps away from them.
We had one of our best seasons ever in 2007 on inshore bluefin by trolling and jigging. The advantage we see in trolling is you can get away from the popular lumps that become absolutely crazy at times. You also do not have to go down in leader size to get bites once the sun comes up and the large fleet shows up. There have been many occasions in past years when we lost some very nice bluefin because we had to use very light leaders to get a day time chunk bite and the leaders just did not hold up after a long battle with light drags. We do not have to worry about this when trolling which to me is a real benefit. With the heavier leaders we can put much more drag pressure on the tuna and get them to the boat quicker. This is important for the bluefin we release as they have a better chance of survival with a shorter fight. There are also those hot, humid and still days when the flies invade and are just killers, by trolling we get some relief from this.
As far as fishing locations go, last season the really big bluefin seemed to be located south around 50 to 60 miles or so from our home port of Cape May mostly along the 20 fathom line and out to the 30, but these areas also had lots of boat traffic with both trollers and chunkers depending on the day and time you fished. We know for a fact there was a very good troll bite extending north up off Atlantic City, NJ for a least a few boats and south down past the Ham Bone. The message here is there were quite a few good sized bluefin all along the 20 fathom line and it was just up to the angler to get a good chart and experiment until they found the bait and tuna. We fished anywhere from the Misty Blue to the north and south down 5 miles past the Ham Bone and many of the lumps and hills had bluefin on them at one time or another last season.