Well we went from 58 yellowfin on the chunk in 2 nights to very hard fishing. Who knows what it is – who knows what is was but we had some of the best fishing ever this year and it was bound to slow.

The slow down started after the Northeast blow we had early 1.5 weeks ago.

The 60 Ritchie Howell has completed 38 overnighters thus far this year. 34 of them were outstanding but 4 of the last 6 were pretty slow.

Starting on August 26-27 the Ralph Acampora charter spent 24 hours in the canyons with nothing at all to show for it but a crew that worked their butts off with no results. They were in the Hudson so on August 27-28 with the Eric Newicki charter they ran down to the Toms Canyon and only scratched out a few mahis. So the decision was made to start mixing in Bluefin on the inshore grounds so with the Pete Cozzolino charter they stopped for Bluefin on the way out and nailed a couple nice ones in around the Chicken Canyon. Out in the Hudson Canyon they only picked a single nice yellowfin at night.

Finally on Sunday-Monday with the Rich O’Day charter they started to get a better feel on the fish and trolled a couple longfin and chunked a couple yellowfin along with a nice white marlin release. It turned out to be one of the better trips of the week so we were hoping that the fishing would turn on. It didn’t.

On Monday they took the Kevin Corradino charter out and again found the tuna completely gone. They released a very small sword at night and that was it. So that was it for us. We were able to convince the Mario Sarbone charter on Wednesday, September 1 to just do a Bluefin trip and they made the right choice.

Running 70 miles from Manasquan Inlet Capt Phil Dulanie trolled our normal tuna pattern to find the fish which were scattered. Someone else found them first and called us in and the bite was on. They jigged and trolled over 20 bluefin bringing 12 to the boat for the official release.

In summary the Bluefin fishing, while far, is worth running to as the fish are all quality 50-60 inch fish. More importantly though there is very good water about 50 miles from the Hudson and moving this way – some boats have caught well in it so only time will tell. It should be here in a week or so.