Departed Cataumet harbor labor day morning @ 6:00 for first excursion to The Dump aboard my 34 Whaler Defiance, Atlantic Blast. Just before arriving at the SE corner spotted 50 or so porpoises breaking wildly just as we hit the 70 degree mark at around 0900. Set out 2 small bars(one green, one black/chrome), daisy chain, jet troll, zuki and a cedar plug. Almost instantly had the first false albie on and in the boat quickly...about 15 lbs. Took the green Bar. Fish hitting very close to the boat. Set the lines again and this time a double header....2 of the same. One on the Cedar and one on the jet troll. Hungry and indiscriminant fish. Lost site of the breaking porpoise and never saw them again. Trolled the SE corner for several hours with no further breaks and hardly a bird visible. Only 2-3 other boats out there. I found this odd on a holiday morning that seemed ripe for fishing with lighter winds and sunny skies. Around 1:00 we finally had another sole final strike, this time a 40-50 lb. yellowfin. Hit our green bird/daisy chain deep rigger set. Initial hit was ahead of the stinger but he circled back, jumped out of the water and struck the stinger coming down. Fish on for about 20 seconds and then slack and what would be the final opportunity of the day was lost....flouro leader on the daisy stinger snapped and was evident his first strike frayed the line based on what was left. We trolled another hour or so, throwing in some ballyhoo and mixing up colors, etc to no avail. Steamed back north to The Claw and trolled for about 45 minutes with no action in the now flat water. Did see a very small school of halfbeaks breaking, but thats it. All in all a decent day for my first run to the dump. First time I've boated false albies and was great to see our two young teenagers on the boat fighting those fish. Anybody else out south of the vineyard yesterday?
Also went south Labor Day. Found a pod of dolphin just past Nomans and they followed our bow for several miles. Put in at the claw: albie after albie after albie in 69 degree water. Pulled up and put back in at the fingers: albie after albie after albie in 70 degrees. Headed to the northern dump with the same result in nearly 72 degree water. After 15 or so false albacore the reel started to scream and 5 minutes later we brought to the side of the boat a 5 to 6 foot mako, a first for us, caught on a green and orange daisy chain. We had another big hit, but this time had just a mangled false albacore at the end of the fight. Headed home through the claw where we managed to chum up a bunch of mahi around a high flier, but still couldn't get a bite. Great day on the water.
I started there 1/2 hr before you and went south 20, west 15 and back north 20.
Quite honestly the water was gray, lifeless and the breaks were ill defined. The 70 degree water you were in dropped to 66 a few miles further down, was up, down, in and out before finally going 69 - 71 and 71 -> 74 almost 20 miles further down.
The water in Sunday's pic's before the NE blow moved at least 3-4 miles south west and the sharp break's reported on Sat were gone.
We had perhaps a dozen mahi, 2 good ones and the rest rat's as well as the cutest little 2' mako one could imagine. We had 1 mystery whack/knockdown that was suspicious of something better but given the lifelessness I'm assuming it was a mahi with bad eyes.
No tuna, no signs of tuna, no bait, no birds, one pod of porpoise and nothing else. A far cry from 2 weeks ago....
Lucky Duck...what time did you start fishing The Claw? Guessing I made my way by it around 0800 and wondering if you were there much sooner. I didn't see anything busting at the time and water on the cooler side where I ran...thus the ride to The Dump where we found 70 degrees. Guess next time I'll drop lines here before running farther out....sounds like you had the day I was looking for!
No matter when we leave the dock it always seems we have lines in at 7:30 and Monday was no exception. We were fishing in the same general vicinity as Diablo and Michele Marie. Were you one of these boats?
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