10-19 Stellwagen BFT Report

[28Conquest]

Left Sesuit at 6:30am straight past Race Point and around to PHB - no signs of life to warm up the chilly morning. Was wavering between rounding the Cape towards Nauset, but fortunately I decided to head North to the SE Corner. A couple of miles East of the corner in about 150 feet we ran into a two other boats and spotted some quick tuna splashes. Put the lines in pulling splash bars and a green machine chain.

As the sun came out behind the clouds and we got into the slack tide, we started spotting tuna leaping in the area and we had two swings and misses in our spread. 5 minutes later we were tight on the rainbow bar (long rigger) with a nice strong fish peeling line off a 50. LOVE THAT SOUND!!!

Fish took one good long run in the beginning and then we tightened the drag down and hauled him back to the boat in about 20 minutes. When we got him boatside, he looked pretty close to being a keeper so we lip gaffed him and pulled him up to measure. Taped out at 63, so we slid him back into the water and tried to swim him to revive, but he was having none of it. He extricated himself from the gaff with one angry shake and was off like a lightning bolt!

After a bit of post-adrenaline stupidity (seemed like none of us could get our heads on straight!) we finally managed to get all our lines in, untangled, splash bars right side up, clipped in, on the correct rigger, etc etc, and back to fishing. The next 3 hours was an exercise in EXTREME frustration. There were tuna EVERYWHERE. I mean spread out over at least several square miles, everywhere you looked. But they were all up and down in 2 seconds - literally one or two splashes, or a single leap out of the water, and then gone!

By this time the fleet had grown to around 30 or 40 boats and there we a bunch of guys running and gunning. They must have been going crazy because we never once saw the fish in one place for more than 3 seconds. It wasn't really that different from when we hooked up, but we never got another sniff on our spread and our attempts at getting close enough to cast were pretty futile. Not sure what the magic was, if any - maybe the guys with livies were doing better?

We dropped a few jigs to the bottom to see if we could find any cod or haddock (still just E of the SE corner in about 150-170 feet) but all we got was dogs. We ran home towards the SWC, stopping to jig here and there, and spotted tuna everywhere. One practically jumped into our boat while were jigging - I swear they were taunting us!

But of course I can't complain - it was an incredible day and we caught and released a beautiful fish.

28C

[twofinbluna]

Nice job catching one and hate to bring it up, but its probably best to be measuring those fish in the water instead of pulling them into the boat with a meat hook and then releasing them. Although good to hear it was lively when it went away. With all the people reading these sites just wanted to make that point.

[28Conquest]

I agree - we should have measured him in the water. I thought about it for about 10 seconds, but he was thrashing hard so I went for the lip gaff. At least we were pretty quick getting him back in (3 minutes max)

I also forgot to tag him.

[twofinbluna]

I agree - we should have measured him in the water. I thought about it for about 10 seconds, but he was thrashing hard so I went for the lip gaff. At least we were pretty quick getting him back in (3 minutes max)

I also forgot to tag him.

Sorry again for calling that point out, but just figured it was worth mentioning for all the people who read these things. Glad to hear your response and think it was good it was done quick and he seemed to be kicking hard when he left.

[28Conquest]

No apology necessary! (and in case it was unclear, I was serious about forgetting to tag the tuna - I bought a bunch of those tags at a seminar in the spring and I haven't used any yet)

Here's another fish we caught and released that day.

I swear this is exactly how he came up - we did NOT do this on purpose, as tempting as it might be!

Amazingly enough when we finally cut through the tangle and released it, the dog was still alive. Pretty tough critters!

[sportsman250]

we did NOT do this on purpose, as tempting as it might be!

thats too humane anyways.