Tuesday July 7th report from Cape May on BFT

[Caveman Sportfishing]

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Still not a lot happening down our way on Bluefins jigging or chunking overall. Yesterday some of my friends had BFT in the 60 inch range and a decent number of fish in the middle 50's (inch) range plus a couple under 47 inches all caught trolling. Only heard of one Bluefin caught on a jig and that was it. All my friends that jigged and chunked did nothing yesterday at all and the best bite overall was by far the guys trolling. Not the report you probably want to hear if you are a jigger but it should change any day now. Also trying to improve on our knot skills and yesterday we set up all our jigging tackle and put strong ball bearing swivels in line and used all crimps since all our top shots and leaders are 80 lbs and up. Crimps work fine on the bigger tuna as we used them a lot last year but the biggest problem is I worry about charters reeling the crimp in through the guides and possibly ruining them. We leave a flanged end on all our crimps and that scares me but it also scares me the knots we know how to tie will not hold up to tuna when they get over 100 lbs with 20 plus lbs of drag. I am hoping to hear more reports of tuna caught on jigs real soon but as of this morning the best of it by far getting multiple bites was trolling large ballyhoos. One captain I know lost one that stretched him out over 900 yards with 28 lbs of drag but did manage to boat a smaller fish later in the day but all on the troll so there are at least a few really big fish out there now but they are feeding mostly above the thermocline in the warmer water which they do ever year at this time pretty much. We have always caught them better trolling early season in the past but mostly BFT under 80 lbs. I honestly believe we should see some much bigger tuna any day real soon on the more Southern lumps and hills. One thing for sure any fish that can stretch out 900 yards of line with 28 lbs of drag is one to be reckoned with.

[Custom Canvas]

Caveman, you should really look into windon leaders for you jigging and popping they are really the best way to go.

no fumbleing with the line when it gets caught in the guides on the drop as the knots tend to do and no worries about the guides getting broken.

search around on the site for capt. joe shutes video on how to make them it take a few for pratice but the very first one i tied i caught a 100plus lb bluefin no problem!!

cc out

[Caveman Sportfishing]

We have all wind-on but our problem was adding a swivel in line to try to help keep the line from twisting when pulling certain jig up in the water column.
We decided to today to just leave off the swivel and just tie the jig using a knot which will probably be a uni or no name and just have a total wind-on set up without the in line swivel and no crimps anywhere.