acid barge to cia grounds 9-5

[harrisonr]

we left new london around 5:15 with the intentions of getting to a spot near the gully. As luck would have it, the 2-4 foot seas they predicted ended up to be 4's with the occasional 2 stacked on top. A bit lumpy and we had a slow 15-20 knot ride out. It settled down nicely after about 1:00 though.

Anyway, as we were passing block, I picked up some draggers working the acid barge area and figured that would be a good place to set in. Where there are draggers, there will be life thinks me. checked the drift, it seemed like it would send us towards the butterfish hole - great thinks me. We set in.

Unfortunately the wind must have been affected by block island. Within a half mile we were drifting almost due west, with a slight sw lean. We finally ended the drift over 12 miles later just past and north tip of the cia grounds. We had action off and on the whole way.

Long story short, we hit a pup mako pretty quickly and brought it boatside, but it looked too close to call so we let him go. It could have been either 52, 54, or 56, but thems the breaks.

The rest of the day was a steady stream of blue sharks, plus some mystery runnoffs we never brought close enough to see. Had one shiny large fish snap the line just shy of being able to id it. I hope it was a blue shark, because if it was anything else we lost a good meal. This thing had gone through three anglers and as I was putting some real heat to it the line popped.

We also saw a mystery fin cruise by. the rest of the crew didn't think it was a thresher but i do and some other people from another site agree.. I don't think we got a pic of it either, but it was big whatever it was.

No matter, everyone who wanted to got to tug fish to the boat. No meat to take home but hey, thems the breaks. We supplemented the fresh meat with live, bringing up dogfish to liveline (they were the hot bait over by montauk). There is a good use for them once in a while.

At least we didn't use lot of fuel running around - was about $300 for the day at the new popular prices.

Oh, one other thing, we were practically the only boat out there. We saw two other rec boats the entire day offshore - one heading somewhere and one drifting a couple miles away near montauk.