This November is shaping up to be stellar. 3 trips thus far in the month, and 3 really good days of fishing. There are large numbers of tuna of all sizes present up off Stellwagen and inside the bay, and yesterday they put on a pretty good show all day long. We had fish from peanut sized up through qualified monster status around the boat all day. Most of the fish we saw were singles or two-sys, but we did witness one really good feed that had bigger pods of hungry tuna up and slashing first thing in the morning.
Left the dock at 5:30 am feeling the pressure as I had Nicola Zingarelli from Spain over to do an article and get some footage. Always tough when the cameras are watching, but thankfully my worries were very short lived. Made great time out to the grounds, arrived on scene to several other boats all over the edge of the bank. Despite the numbers of boats, I liked the setup and the amount of fish, so we set up for a drift. On our 5th cast, we came tight and Willy got to fight his first big tuna ever on spinning gear. Fish was hooked on a Tattoo Sea Pup in color changing purple, an OTI 7'6" 100# rod and a Stella 18SW with 80# braid with a 100# wind-on leader. Despite a valiant effort, this tuna beat Willy up a bit and he passed off the rod near end game. After a brief tussle with a fresh crew member, the iron was placed gently under its chin and hauled aboard. Fish taped at 60".
After that, our day was filled with dodging the traffic and shaking a few shadows, all while hooking and save for one successfully landing another 5 fish. We had another on a jig, and the rest on the topwaters throughout the day, with too many other bumps, swipes, and explosions that never got the hooks in the fish. One of the more action filled days of the year in that there really wasnt more than a 10 minute stretch where we werent seeing fish out of the water. The finder was lit up al day with fish near the bottom as well, and we had alot of fun watching the jigs get ignored by all the bottom dwellers most of the day, save for two bumps and the 66 inch fish Kil released mid morning.
We fished depths from 200 feet up to 68 feet, and encountered tuna in just about all of them. Water was a uniform 50-50.5 all day, good clarity, with TONS of dogfish all over the water column and at the surface. Had one spot on the way out where the engines were spiking to 5500 RPMS and then down to 2000 and right back up again as we cut up hundreds on the surface. These critters need some thinning anyways, so we had fun chopping them up and watching the pieces get spit out the wash.
The bite should continue for a few more weeks, I am running till Thanksgiving or the fat lady sings if anyone is interested in a bit of late season carnage.
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