We are now seeing as many Yellowfins being caught inshore as the bigger BFT

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Right now based on my last 4 trips there are probably has many Yellowfins to be caught as those bigger Bluefins along the 30 fathom line. I am referring to the general area north of the Elephant Trunk as I have not fished south of there in a long time like we did in past years. Most recently around that secret spot many of us from the Southern Ports have been targeting those nice size Bluefins the last few weeks. I CAN HONESTLY SAY YELLOWFINS ARE ALL OVER THIS AREA COVERING MANY SQUARE MILES NOW IN LIMITED QUANITIES BUT SEEM TO BE INCREASING IN SIZE AND NUMBERS ON EACH TRIP. On Sunday’s trip with a limited amount of boat traffic due to crappy seas conditions plus the threat of thunderstorms and heavy rain predicted I would say more Yellowfins were caught than Bluefins and I think you will see this trend continue from now on as the Bluefins leave our area and head north which they do every year sometime in August. The difference in this year over recent years is the quantity of Yellowfins we are now seeing inshore which reminds of years past when we never even went to the canyons to catch nice size Yellowfins until the fall at the earliest. It could we are going to see some very good inshore Yellowfin action the next few weeks from what I am seeing right now plus a whole bunch of nice Mahi mixed in with the tuna.

I am concerned that the fantastic Bluefin bite might be coming to a quick end real soon if not right now. I have seen far less bait and BFT after the big NW blow on Friday as compared to earlier last week when getting a big BFT was as about as easy as it will ever be especially at first light before the boat traffic arrives. I am waiting for the reports on Monday (today) to see how the boats do as the conditions look far better for chunking than on Friday-Sunday as weekends and strong winds are not very friendly to chunking tuna without anchoring. I believe anchoring, live bait and jigging is the secret around the moon phases when tuna fishing but that is another story. Again we will see how the boats that fish today do. I do know we are not seeing anything on our fish finder like we did last week or the week before as far as tuna and bait go.

I personally gave up to doing catch and release a few trips ago and switched to trolling for other species. I am concerned as well as others about the health of these Bluefin more than ever now with the reports of long drawn out fights on light drags ECT. With Yellowfins showing up now we can try to catch a early am BFT and move off to areas of less boat traffic and possibly troll up some other fish which is very good overall for the BFT and this makes me personally happy that we no longer have to do catch and release on most trips any longer to satisfy our customers.

It is starting to look real good now for a quality run of fall Yellowfins in our canyons as well the current inshore bite on them. We now can add to the mix Wahoo as one over 70 lbs was caught by a private boat at our dock on Saturday along the 20 fathom line from what I was told yesterday. I know of 4 caught the last few days and this should only get better each day in over the next 4-6 weeks. It is all good and it seems to be light years better than this time last year at least for the opportunity to put a nice catch together really no farther than 50-65 miles from our home port in Cape May.

This was a nice trip as we spent a few hours trolling and resulted in a few decent Mahi's and a small Yellowfins along with a 160 lb BFT.