Wed Report fishing out of Cape May, NJ

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Planned on fishing inside the Spencer yesterday on a day troll trip but the reports I heard on the radio from the few boats that overnighted sounded less than encouraging. We only heard a couple boats talking and I do not know if they were in the which canyons they were in Spencer or even the Lindy but it was enough to make me point the boat more south and fish inside the Wilmington especially with the forecast for strong NE winds later in the day. What I heard was there was lots of Tinker Macks, marine mammals, squid with pretty water but no tuna at night or on the day troll. Possibly others did much better the last few days as I only heard from a couple of boats that fished in the canyons since most boats I talked to were running day trips and fished inside between 30-40 fathoms and overall the radio was pretty quite all day on Wednesday.

Tuesday some boats did decent trolling inshore of the canyons on Yellowfins and Wahoo but yesterday with far fewer boats I hardly heard anything positive all day from any boat regardless if they were inshore or out along the 100 line.

One our trip yesterday we started out trolling the 30-40 fathom lines and had one small Yellowfin and but opted to move more inshore in the am as the NE winds started to make things a little sporty offshore as the fan starting to really turn on as forecasted. We stopped behind one scallop boat but it had no tuna behind it and then ran south to a few inshore lumps to see if they were holding any Bluefins and we saw absolutely no bait or tuna on any these lumps. A few of these lumps and hills were the same ones that held BFT in July but yesterday afternoon they were all lifeless. We then tried a little sharking inshore to finish the day off. I had wanted to fish in the late morning -early afternoon as the best reports of a Yellowfin bite I got from Tuesday was after the tide changed (incoming) and that is when we had most of our bites on our recent trips earlier in the week. I know of at least a few boats that did okay on tuna Tuesday even though it was not red hot by any means it was decent and one boat I know of had 5 or 6 Yellowfins in the afternoon plus I heard of some nice size Wahoo boated also.

On Wednesday's trip we started out not targeting Yellowfins as we put out everything for Wahoo with wire and down on planners or heavy cigar weights. We also had some horse ballyhoo’s wwwwwwwback but with short traces of wire hoping for a Wahoo or big Bluefin and that is what we caught our Yellowfin on. If we had been able to fish in the afternoon I would have put out smaller baits (medium Ballyhoo on mono leaders) along with Canyon Runner spreader bars without planners or Cigar weights hoping for a few Yellowfins but it was all Wahoo for us yesterday morning prior to moving a little closer to home with the seas building. (And maybe a lucky big BFT on the wwwwwwback horse Ballyhoo). I personally feel that planners or 3-4 lb cigar weights does impact the Yellowfin bite at least the smaller ones that are now being caught inshore. I love fishing multiple spreads that might catch different species but it has been my experience if you fish for Wahoo fish for Wahoo and when tuna fishing fish for tuna. I might be wrong on this and welcome others opinion that may have experienced just the opposite.

On a side note some of that water where most boats I know have been fishing on the temperature break along the 30 line is now cooling down some and blending with the green colder water from what is was on Monday and Tuesday where a few boats I know had between 3-6 Yellowfins and a couple of nice Wahoo especially on Tuesday. The water inshore is changing and going out to the Lindy-Spencer weather permitting seems like a very good game plan this weekend if the boat traffic is not horrendous. We will have to see how these strong NE winds affect everything the next few days. Best of luck to everyone that gets out and if nothing else it will help break that cabin fever so many have been experiencing lately.

PS: Still plenty of sharks inshore but no Mako's or Threshers yet in our local waters but it should not be long now with the water cooling down.