We turned to desperation on yesterday’s trip after 3 hours of trolling for Yellowfins with no action at all we decided to try some different techniques and put out some of our new planner bridle rigs we got from Chuck at Tournament Cable late last week. There are times when changes in the spread are called for and sometimes it makes a difference between getting a few bites and others times no matter what you try it’s make no difference as the tuna just do not want to cooperate. I have seen this happen both ways so many times over the years but yesterday changing up by running our meat baits deeper seemed to allow us to get few shots when the bites were hard to come by where we were trolling. I had marked the thermocline around 50 feet or so and thought the tuna might be down deeper below the thermocline so we opted to run our baits deeper using our new Planner Bridles from Tournament Cable in Burleigh, NJ. Basically we copied what we do down in Morehead City, NC for giant Bluefins but substituted Chuck’s Planer Bridles rigs instead of downriggers that we have used the last few years when winter GBT fishing. We feel these new planner bridles allow us some advantages over using downriggers the more traditional way to get baits deeper and I do believe although this is only a hunch they allow the baits to get down deeper without using the heavier planner sizes but again just a hunch. We used #12 Old Salty Planners today as we had tried heavier ones briefly on our last trip and the bigger heavier ones just pulled too hard on the 80 class bent butt rod and reel that we use as a substitute planner rod as to date we do not have a dedicated planner rod like some others we know that use this planner bridles mostly down off North Carolina for Wahoo and winter GBT.

It took a lost fish or two today on how to handle the tuna when in the swivel reinforced rod holder but we got the system down in relative ease and finally boated one. We found fishing this way does attract sharks running a deep bait but we only lost of our Fish Finder lures from Capt Joe Shute in Atlantic Beach, NC which we use instead of class 9 inch Ilanders. Pink and Crystal got all the bites today which I think were around 4-5 tuna bites and a few shark ones. We did not start using the planner until around 9:00 am or a little later so I feel we may have ended up with up to 8-10 actual tuna chances if we had started at daybreak running our baits deeper. This is far better than anyone came close to getting today except for far up in the Tom’s Canyon. I would be thrilled if we could catch anywhere from 3-6 tuna per trip as it really is slow overall except for a lucky few who have caught some recently but it has slowed down for us and most others some the last week or so. Maybe using a planner will help a little get some tuna bites when not much else seems to be working. I am far too tired to get into the details on how to use and rig a Planner Bridle rig but I am sure Chuck or one of the tackle stores that handle his gear will be more than helpful in explaining all of this. I have been fishing with planner for about 15 years now mostly for Wahoo and Bluefin and today is the first time I actually used them to entice Yellowfin bites as I was convinced planners, downriggers ect spook Yellowfin but I learned a new lesson today using them.

We had one really nice bite and we fought the tuna until it chewed (not a bite off like a Wahoo) through the 130 lb leader which I now think was a bigger Bluefin rather than 50-60 lb Yellowfins that we have been catching the last 3-4 weeks. The reason is a boat fishing almost exactly where we had been trolling all morning yesterday fought and released a 62 inch Bluefin so maybe now we will see some BFT show up down on off southern NJ which has been almost totally void of BFT for a good many weeks now. My guess is most of these BFT would probably be over 59 inches but who knows as there just might be a few legal ones in the mix and it would be quite refreshing to see a some BFT show up locally but one day is far too early to tell what is going to happen locally on BFT scene.

PS: I might add a friend fishing by us had no planners or downriggers on board so he moved inshore of where we were fishing dropped down a hammered diamond jig and fought a big BFT they lost but boated a 48 inch one plus they had another one almost spool them but never saw the tuna when it pulled the hook.

We are not talking way up north here but much closer to our home port in Cape May along the 30 fathom line so we will see if some BFT show up in any numbers in the near future.