BFT & a big Mahi on the Hooked Up 11 yesterday no where near the 19 Fathom Lump

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Well after cancelling a couple of charters late last week for Bluefins we finally decided to run our first inshore BFT trip this summer yesterday. We felt it was now time to take a regular charter out yesterday with all the mid-week reports of a decent troll bite at the 19 Fathom Lump. What had me concerned is all the reports I got last week was the 19 Fathom Lump was the only show in town for BFT since there was few in any being caught anywhere but this lump. Supposedly there just was no bait on these other locations along with few if any tuna. I just though this to be very strange that the 19 Fathom Lump could be just about the only place within 80 miles of Cape May that held decent numbers of BFT. Usually by the second week of July we know of numerous locations where there is bait and tuna to be able to put together a least a decent day of BFT fishing regardless if you prefer trolling, chunking and even jigging with a few well over 100 lbs. From what I had heard the 19 Fathom was the only show in town unless you want to run 75-90 miles down to the lumps and hills of Virginia’s Southern Shore and even then it was crap shoot at best. My guess is most of the boats fishing the OCMD Tuna Tournament did just that as this past weekend as in the big tuna tournament as there sure were not to many of the top tuna catching boats from the southern ports anywhere around us yesterday. I have heard rumors as of today how they did in the tournament but will be anxious to hear more information after the tournament from friends that fished it. At this time we are still on the fence if we will be fishing the Mid-Atlantic Tuna Tournament later this week and a lot of that depends on the money issues and other things such as the marine forecast ECT and we should know for sure by today or tomorrow what we will be doing one way or the other. If we do not fish the tournament then we will be available for some open boat trips or regular charters this coming Wednesday thru Sunday but there is a good chance will be fishing the tournament.
I absolutely deplore fishing in fleets especially when trolling and it was an easy call for me to head else ware yesterday and try my luck far away from the large fleet around the 19 Fathom Lump even thought it was a crap shoot with no confirmed good tuna action anywhere but the there. I really did not know exactly where we would go when I left the dock yesterday morning but we left at around 2:00 am with the game plan to beat the fleet to the 19 Lump and get our big BFT and then move off and troll for Mahi or a BFT under 47 inches far away from the 19 Fathom Lump and all the boat traffic. Well this changed when I got within a few miles of the 19 Fathom lump and my radar showed a good number of boats already there with many coming behind and they were all heading right for the Dump Site. I decided last minute that there was no way am I going to troll in that crowd and pointed the Hooked Up 11 to faraway places that I hoped we could fine some BFT. This turned out to be a great call and we ended up having a banner day fishing with some very pleased and happy charter customers. Honestly it would not have even mattered all that much to some in the group as they live outside Phoenix and to be able to get out on the ocean with the cooler temperatures early this morning was all they really wanted and any fish we caught today was just a bonus. They will be returning to Arizona in few days and dreaded the mid-summer heat there and just loved their short stay at the Jersey Shore. Grade for yesterday’s trip a solid B and would have been an A if we would have taken some time to jig and chunk a few nice BFT.
The most important information I can share with the readers in my opinion is there are now many different locations where there is lots of bait both on the bottom and up in the water column. It took us a couple hours of trolling at 4.5 knots to find the bait where we caught our fish which was a very short period of time and I am sure we could have done catch and release on additional BFT if our charter had wanted but they were totally content to call it day after catching what we did on yesterday’s trip. We fished open bottom in the deeper water that have what I think our patches of corral beds and have done well in these locations many times over the years but have had an extremely difficult time anchoring to chunk and possibly these locations have been left alone by the scallop fleet and that is why the bait was stacked up there yesterday. The tuna were caught on planners rigged with 200 lb spectra fished on a heavy duty Scotty Downriggers out 100 feet and our lines were placed at 200 and 250 feet behind the planners with Fish Finder Lures that we use down in Morehead City, NC for Giant Bluefin Tuna in front of horse Ballyhoo. We pretty much fised the hard edge where the sea temps jumped up to almost 75 degrees from 73 with super nice inshore water and feel it is almost time to get out the Wahoo lures when you find water like we did yesterday. The bottom we are looking for show as bright red thin lines with big clumps on our digital Raymarine Fishfinder for what is it worth with the power and gain turned up when looking for this type of bottom structure and bait. Some places had much more bait than others but my fish finder was lit up most of the morning from about 8:00 am until we called it a day about 11:00 and headed back to Cape May. This was more than fine with the group as some were driving back to Harrisburg, PA yesterday afternoon and by the time they got back to the dock and they got their fish cleaned and iced it would be late afternoon with a fairly long drive ahead of them. You do not have to just fish the Dump Site for BFT as they are spread out in various locations between the 20-30 fathom lines and all you have to do is go look for them and with a little luck and skill I think most anyone could have put a nice catch together yesterday. My next big question is can we catch them chunking or jigging now and I personally feel we can. We were not on any well known popular lumps where we caught all our fish yesterday and at times there was only one boat within 2 miles of us and other times maybe 4-6 maximum. This is the way I like to fish and at least today it worked out pretty well for us yesterday. Finding the bait and tuna is always the most important thing but what techniques you use to catch them is another and we always share all our knowledge with our charter customers and we do know some tricks to help catch BFT. For those interested in learning how we fish for BFT, Wahoo, Yellowfins or Mahi consider joining us on one of our open boat trips and we will do our best to teach how we fish off Cape May in the summer months. We will be announcing shortly dates for jigging only reduced price trips coming up in a week or so and we hope to have at least one jigging pro on board on all these trips to teach and explain in detail as much information as possible including the newest and finest dedicated jigging tackle which we now have on board the Hooked Up 11 for our customers to try out. One hint I would suggest is to watch Chuck Richardson’s video from Tournament Tackle, on rigging Ballyhoo and that should help many on how Chuck rigs Ballyhoo and we have found removing the air bladder and intestines seems to be a very important step when rigging large Ballyhoo. We will be back out Monday and I think we have room for one or two anglers on this trip and we definitely plan to chunk and jig some to see if we can get a bite that way as well as troll and can anyone guess where we might be going on Monday’s trip?

PS: Our charter was good enough to share with us some tuna and Mahi and what a great dinner we had last night combined with Jersey corn and tomatoes.

Picture from yesterday's very rewarding and fun trip

[Sweet Caroline]

Nice job John. It is nice to see that the tuna have moved in and started to set up in these not as popular areas.