Originally Posted by
stew
Today I fished on Stellwagon Bank for tuna, something I haven't done in about 15 years. I was hired by my good friend to be his cockpit "team leader" for the day. The deal was he would run his boat and I would run the spread and cockpit. The boat is a 38' Henrigues named "Topshelf" and we headed out of Scituate at 2am with intentions of hitting Wildcat Knoll. The wind and the thunder storms altered our plans so we went into Plan B mode and headed for Stellwagon Bank. We started trolling in the dark and I had put out a similar 7 rod spread that I fish out east of Chatham that consisted of the bars he had on the boat. I picked out the colors and swaped out some stingers and we got the spread up and running. We trolled for the first few hours with nothing to really show for it and we really didn't see much. The wind and the cold made it feel more like November instead of May. We had a couple of rigs get hit by those pesky bass but still no tuna bite. I was reeling in a rig, as it was tangled with one of the other ones, when right off the transom we had a nice big tuna come up and grab the stinger but miss the hook. It was a nice tuna. So I figured that would be it, and we had our shot and we missed him. Oh...... bummer. We kept getting bit by the pesky bass and it was driving me crazy. I went into the Galley and discovered the route of all evil... a banana peal in the trash. I was horrified that the evil fruit had been brought aboard this vessel. I took it and performed a cleansing of the evil spirt and threw it over board. 10 mins later I am working the left short rigger when Bam.... a tuna explodes on it and I have the reel in freespool and I am feeding him the rig. I lock it up and we are on... WOOOOOHAAA the reel is singing and the first tuna is tight of the 2010 season! Then the cluster of the seven rod spread come into play and we franticly clear the lines as the angler gets into the fight. The fish made a good strong run and he had us well into the 50w Tiagra spool. We spent the next 20 mins fighting him and soon I got the leader and the gaff was slammed home and the tailrope secured and the first fish of the season was on the board. Just awesome.. first tuna trip on my clients new boat and his first tuna on the new boat. It doesn't get any better than this. We trolled around for another couple of hours and all we had were Bass bites. The fish taped out at 68 inches and very hefty. I would put him at 175lbs easy. We certainly put in the effort with the earlier morning start and we even had enough good Karma on board to overcome the dreaded "Banana" Curse. I am going to sleep well tonight for sure. I will start tuna fishing out east next week and it should be fun. It certainly was fun today to catch a "May" tuna fish on the troll and up on the Bank too, priceless. Capt. Eric
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Capt Eric Stewart lost at sea!!!!!
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