Wednesday report from Poormans and 30 fathom line around Hot Dog

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Fished Wednesday in the Poormans
Left Cape May about 3:30 am and not a bad ride out with the NE winds but we went 80 plus miles down to the southern canyons White Marlin fishing. It was snotty all day and I think it may have been a little nicer to the north than down off the Maryland-Virginia coast. Over all pretty crappy sea conditions all day except in close to the beach at 5:00 pm on the way home. I had a few friends call last night and they were amazed when I told them how rough it was offshore yesterday as where they lived there was not a drop of wind but offshore was a little sporty but very fishable. Well I must have heard at least 50 times the old famous saying "You should have been here yesterday" and it probably was never more true than on Wednesday. There certainly were a few whites caught in a fleet of at least 50 boats but nowhere near what the last couple of days produced. We threw in the towel on fishing for whites and left the fleet to target tuna and wahoo. For us it was nothing more than false albacore, peanut mahi and few mystery bites that did not come tight.

We worked the birds hard out in 700-1000 feet of water to get away from fleet and marked tons of bait and it kind of reminded me of fishing off the Morehead City, NC in the winter with all the bait and birds we saw. This is the area I would have liked to have stayed at and just kept working the bait until the marlin came up but we just flat out could not troll as the weeds were so thick we could not keep our spread in the water without pulling everything back in to clean off the weeds. Kind of reminded me of trolling last fall with all the weeds there was. We ended up working around the fleet in 60-90 fathoms mostly with just dolphins and a few mystery bites. We fished pretty much from the 150 line and got as far south as the 030 line all day and did not have the weed problem inside the 100 line but had to contend with the large fleet and the NE wind which may have had some impact on the fishing yesterday compared the previous few days. We decided to bag the white marlin thing sometime late morning as the reports we heard were a pick at best for most boats on the radio and we never saw one boat all morning hooked up and fighting a fish. We found out later at the dock a few boats did fairly well early am with 4 or 5 releases but nowhere near what Tuesday produced. We trolled from outside the Hot Dog up to the north along the 30 line and inside towards the Hambone looking for tuna or wahoo for a few hours but nothing but false albacore and finally called it a day about 3:30 pm and headed back to Cape May with just a few dolphin in the box to show for a 15 hour day troll trip. We took our time running back to Cape May as seas were still somewhat sporty until we got to around the Old Grounds and improved for the last 20 miles or so. We only heard of one small tuna caught by any boat that overnighted and that was caught late Tuesday afternoon around 50 fathoms trolling but nothing for the few boats that spent the night in the southern Baltimore or Poormans. I really was amazed with the amount of bait we saw that that more tuna were not caught by accident with all the boats out marlin fishing on Wednesday. I believe the canyon water is way too warm for yellowfins and longfins and that is the problem as the thermo cline of warm water is very deep now as this warm water has been around for some time now and has led to the fantastic white marlin fishing recently but not good overall for tuna. I really enjoyed our day overall and had looked forward to catching few billfish after running many many spring Black Drum Mako and recently Bluefin Tuna trips the last few months. I would like to thank Bob Lee and his group from Northeast Batteries in Bristol, PA plus my mate Gene and brother Dave who all worked very hard trying to put together a good catch but for us yesterday it did not happen unless you consider false albacore a good day. For us it is back to tuna fishing if they ever show up down our way and like so many others we are wishing and hoping for the overnight bite to start up real soon.