Virginia Beach Offshore 5-30… Lotsa meat

I spent all day on thursday doing fiberglass work on the boat and preparing for the Pirates Cove Tuna Tourney, but after lookuing at the weather for saturday I decided to can the tournament. Friday was my 29th birthday, so I decided to do some fishing anyways. We got on Matador and left out of Rudee headed for the 300 line where the break was on the SSt from the night before. We sat down right near Dave Trax in 150 fathoms on the 300 line and moments after setting down, we located a 64 to 67.5 temp break. There was lot of life on the break, turtles, man of wars, a turtle eating a man of war, porpoises, pilots, and grass. So after trolling for about an hour. Dave calls and says he's hit. He gets four YFT. While hes fighting fish, I turn and backtrack his course. I get hit in the same spot he did, and I had two come tight, While we were clearing lines, we had several other bites. Pretty much everything got shortstruck, but didnt hookup. They even ripped every single yummy bird off my flying fish daisy chains. We get one fish to the boat and had a professional wiffle ball player miss the gaff shot three times and tuna #1 escapes. I threw the boat in autopilot and came down and gaffed #2 and it was a 30#class yft. It looked like it was gonna be on. Killer marks and hungry fish. NOT. We turned back around and worked the area but no more love on the tunas. A half hour later, we caught a 20# class dolphin when we pulled past a board in the same area. We found some two tones a short time after that and haed a few more short strikes, but nothing came tight and the crew wanted to put some meat in the box. First spot we headed was a new grouper number. I didnt expolore it long but we did one drop and all we caught were hakes. So then we went to the rockpile tilefishing and caught some tiles and sea bass mixed together. None were of great size, but there were plenty of them for entertainment. While we were bringing up a seabass, I looked down and saw something chasing the bass up to the top. The bass comes out of the water and a 60#ish mako comes out of the water 2 feet from the boat chasing the bass. John grabs a ballyhoo witch combo on 50# flouro and hooks it up with a perfect corner of the mouth hookup. After just a couple seconds, we get it at the back of the boat and I get ready to gaff it when I see another, larger mako just behind the one we have on. We get rid of the smaller one and John does the same thing again and hooks this 80# class mako up perfectly. This one starts peeling off and takes about a half a spool on the Shimano 30 two speed. It wasnt looking good for a minute, but I put some fancy boat driving on him and 10 minutes later, we put a gaff in a very pist off 56" mako. After all that excitement, we stopped at the 44 fathom wreck to see if there were bass. Only a couple little guys there. Next stop, the canyon. There we bailed rosies for a while and caught a nice 22# golden and a a couple hakes. One of the hakes was pretty big and would have gone 7 or 8 pounds. After the guys arms were tired of that, we went over and talked with Darren and Shawn on Crystal Cleared for a few minutes and then went to another little hang about ten miles inshore. It was loaded with big bass and we managed to catch quite a few of them with three being citation sized. Up unitl this point it had been gorgeous and calm- fart flat- but the wind kicked up 25 out of the southeast for the ride home. It wasnt a bad ride and we still made it home at 22 knots without beating the boat at all and we pulled in from a late day at the dock at 9pm. we gave it all we had and came home with a box full.
Final tally:
1-2 YFT
1 Mahi
2-Makos (60,80#)
14- Bluelines
4-hakes
1-golden tile
47-rosies
71-sea bass, citations at 5#4oz, 5#2oz,5#1oz

Pictures to come soon.

We still have charter dates available in June. Check www.matadorcharters.com for more info. __________________
Capt. Jake Hiles
MATADOR SPORTFISHING CHARTERS, Rudee Inlet, Virginia Beach
42' Jersey Sportfish
Now booking: Deep drop tilefish/seabass, late spring trophy black & red drum, summer offshore
For availablity and rates call (757)749-6008 or CLICK HERE for Virginia Beach, VA charter fishing aboard Matador
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