Caveman Sportfishing Giant Bluefin Tuna fishing on the 55 Hooked Up II

[Caveman Sportfishing]

This is the first report or post of the winter GBT season for me as I drove home yesterday and now am back at my home in New Jersey for a few days before returning and we start fishing again on Sunday for GBT. My wife Capt Diana will be coming down for a week or so and work with us on the Hooked Up II as she as caught quite a few giants in past years when we fought them out of chairs before turning to swivel rod holders recently. I look forward to having her on board as she usually brings us good luck when GBT fishing plus she can handle the boat when we are doing battle with a GBT and allow me to get down in the cockpit and stick the tuna with a dart. (Harpoon) All we need a few more bites and we will be in good shape but getting the bites can be a challenge in itself.
We have been plagued by some bad luck so far this winter season. We have had 3 very large tuna hooked up only to lose two of them right behind the boat due to gear failure ( 200 lb line broke) and a pulled hook moments prior to them getting them within harpoon range. These two fish were really big ones and would have made for a very happy holiday season for the crew of the Hooked Up II this year but losing tuna is all part of the game when fishing for ones that can go well over 100 inches. We were one of the first boats in the entire fleet to hook up on our first fish and the last one we lost this past Monday was one of only two or three bites for the entire fleet so we are doing things right but need a little luck to close the deal on a GBT. The one fish that was boated on Monday that I know of was around a 107 inches which is a very large tuna for Morehead City and our fish that we pulled the hook on was also a nice one. I am totally confident we will get our share this season in the coming weeks as long as they are around to catch. It has been really slow the last week or so and very few boats had any bites recently and most boats are taking a few days off to save on fuel until more fish arrive plus spend a few days with their families for the Christmas.

The season so far has offered a pretty decent bite for many boats and a few of my friends that live down there full time have caught a GBT in the 400-500 lb range and they have not had one in 3-4 years but they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time and got a bite and landed the fish. Sometimes lady luck smiles at you and occasionally those that only go a few times each winter on bluebird days catch as well as those that fish every day the weather allows. Skill does help over the entire season but being lucky also has its place on occasion also. There are many top notch tuna fisherman down in Morehead City this winter with some of best on the entire East Coast but even with all their skills and knowledge sometimes you need just need to hit one of this fish in the head with your lure especially on those slow days when only a handful of boats get bite. It certainly can be frustrating fishing for GBT but when does happens this is still my most favorite type of fishing even if I personally have little desire to actually fight one of these brutes at my age. I let the younger guys in my crew do the hard work as I operate the boat when we are on a big fish.

We have been fishing most recently the hard temperature breaks where the water goes from 57 to 64 degrees within a few miles about 20 miles SW from the inlet. This area is where the few bites that did occur happened the last few days but again they were far and few between for the entire fleet and on Tuesday I am not sure in any boat even had a bite at all. We were lucky to get ours on Monday as it has slowed down big time recently compared to the previous few weeks. This happened last year also and then picked up in January so we will have to wait and what Mother Nature has in store for us next week.

I used to fish for the GBT in December in close to the beach anywhere within a half mile of the shoals to not more than 4-6 miles from the beach in the colder water and we did quite well with up to 3 GBT caught and released by 9:00 am and eating breakfast back at the dock by 10:30 am. Not any more as these days are long gone for the most part and when the bite goes off now it is often confined to a small area of a couple of square miles and if you are not there you lose. It is as simple as that on many days and that is one of the reasons GBT fishing can be so frustrating. If you make the wrong decision and pick the wrong location your day is probably going to produce nothing but King Mackerel, Black Fin and False Albacore while wasting a lot of good expensive Ballyhoo. It takes a lot preparation, time and luck trying to figure out where the tuna will be especially after the many severe winter weather fronts that we face every winter as it has blown quite a few days from 30-50 knots with excessive cloud cover making it impossible to use sea temperature charts which I personally rely so much on to find the hard temperature breaks. We used to leave the dock in the old days and just look for the huge flocks of diving gannets or look for large slicks on the surface and on many days you could smell the bunker and that is where we got most of our bites and overall it was pretty easy fishing but times have definitely changed but that is the same for almost every species we fish for. (I think I can remember what a Yellowfin Tuna looks like but we certainly have not seen too many over 20 lbs on the Hooked Up II the last few years). Nothing high tech back then but there was so much more bait around and for the tuna to feed on. This winter GBT fishing is tough and extremely challenging to almost all that participate regardless of your skill levels but it is still my favorite and I will never get tired of hearing a 130 class reel screaming and on our first fish the tuna peeled of 2/3 of a spool with 42 lbs of drag and that takes a pretty nasty fish to do that. The other part I like so much is all the great guys that we have met over the years GBT fishing and the friends we now have down in MHC both from up North and those that make the MHC-Beaufort area their year round home. If you enjoy living and breathing fishing for GBT this is the place to be and the nice 50-70 degree weather is does not hurt also. I almost died when I got out of my truck yesterday in Delaware on my way home from MHC when I stopped for coffee and felt the wind and temperature up here compared to when we were cleaning the boat after Tuesday's trip and we were dressed in just long sleeve tee shirts at the dock and the sun felt so nice. I talked to the local captain from Harker's Island, NC who is a full time crew member on the Hooked Up II yesterday afternoon and he was over at our boat and it was sunny and almost 60 degrees which was a lot nicer than at my house in NJ as we have at least a foot or more of snow and they barely know what snow is down in MHC. Funny some of my friends that were born and raised down in NC claim it is hard to understand me with my accent.

Happy Holidays to everyone from Capt Diana and myself and give us a call or e-mail if you want to do some GBT fishing or bottom fishing as we plan to run some jigging trips in the coming weeks that should provide great table fare plus a lot of sore arms and legs jigging for large Amberjacks that can get up to 80 lbs from what I have been told and can flat out test any angler when fishing even with the some of the best world class jigging tackle which we have on board our boat. Sea Bass is open down there right now and I am told you can load up on them load along with a lot of other tasty bottom dwellers on jigs only a few miles from shore but more on bottom fishing in the near future.

[reeltwisted]

Good luck down there John,and Happy Holidays to you and the Mrs.

Rusty
Off the Hook Bait & Tackle