First Bluefin of the Season

[Bigeye10]

Headed out of Scituate harbor Saturday morning on the Water Dog (36 Yellowfin) . First trip of the season out to the Bank looking for Bluefins. We got to the bank around 5:15 AM to see one other rec and a commercial boat. We were greeted by working birds and a spectacular whale show,Bubble feeding , breaching (very cool). Get the spread out , and move down the edge for about an hour with nothing . Then 2 rods go off at once, but no drag pulling out. Old yellow eyes strikes and starts to chew up our squid bars, well we need shark bait for some upcoming tourneys so we stay in the area and fill one of the fish boxes. Capt. Doug is getting frustrated the blues are chomping up his expensive bars and asks PHil and I if we want to change it up , take in the tuna gear and head inshore for blues and stripers? We say its early and we had good intel from (Carl at sportsman landings) that they were some good medium bluefins in the area. We decide to leave the gear in for a while and fight thru the blues. We see a whale carcass floating and decide tho troll by and look for sharks. After the first pass around the whale , we see no sharks, but on the second pass we see some boils. As we are trolling away from the carcass we hear a guy on the radio who is on. We keep at it ,then we see a good boil behind the right 18" squid bar. Miss, we drop the bar back , nothing. Then another boil, Miss, drop the bar back, crank it forward, nothing. Fish boils for a third time, drop it back, BANG where on. Fish is dumping line of the 50 pretty good , phil and doug start clearing the other lines , i grab the rod and put some pressure on the fish but he keeps goin . Dumps 2/3 of the line , when i move to the bow and doug gets the fish in position to start putting some line back on the reel. Being able to fight the fish all the way around the bow is sweet and we were able to get the fish to the gaff within 20 minutes. Until we had the fish boatside we didnt really have a guess on size, capt. doug reached over to leader the fish and sizr nice fish , better get 2 gaffs. We drag the fish over the side and flop it on the deck, alot bigger than we expected. A nice fat 59" inch Bluefin. Not bad for the first fish of the year. I want to thank Doug for a great day and some great boat handling and Phil for a fine gaff job and filet job. Sorry about the bad pics, taken with my phone

[thejack]

Way to start it off!!!

[shoefish]

Nice story, and great fish! Were you using one of Carl's real squid bars? Thanks again for sharing, and congrats again!

[Bigeye10]

Nice story, and great fish! Were you using one of Carl's real squid bars? Thanks again for sharing, and congrats again!

Thanks shoe

We put the trip together late thursday, so didnt have a chance to get down and see Carl.

[trollman]

we were out there at 5: a.m. in a 37' Duffy trolling squid bars (all colors) but no fish all day, left for home at 2 p.m. tide change. guy next to us in a stick boat trolled up a 74 inch bluefin around 9 a.m. very nice. lots of stripers out there tho and had some fun w/ them on some home made spoon rigs.

bait and whales and good fish marked everywhere - we will be back!

[JD5652]

Bigeye-

Congrats! and Thanks for the report!

[oldmud]

Congrats. Bigeye, Thanks for the report.!!! LOL. on the phone pic. Hey It came out pretty good.

Don

[POON MAN]

Way to go Doug and Ben !!!

[Hudson]

Nice work guys!