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First we have not gotten a bite since I posted earlier in the week. A few were caught although but very few as of yesterday (Sat). We fished way out to the South towards the warm water around the 240 rocks where the bottom jumps up to about 70 feet from over 90 plus but from what we caught and saw it was King Mackerel territory with the warmer water around 72 degrees. thought I would give this a shot as almost all the boats were going over to the East side of lookout Shoals and I wanted to fish buy ourselves and see if we could find one out there eating Kings possibly or False Albacore. We rigged up with a large sea mullet and three horse ballyhoo but only got bites from toothy critters as our leader had teeth marks which were either kings or those treaded sharks down there. We worked our way back inshore to the 10 fathom lumps and pounded that area but no tuna bites even though there was not more than one or two commercial boats within a couple of miles of us. The day before we worked the 30 minute rock and marked allot of bait over there on East Side but no tuna bites so we decided to go south and west and see if we could get lucky but it was not to be. We tried everything the last few days except the one thing that was probably the most important when fishing the cleaner warmer water in the daytime and that was going down in leader size from 200 lb. fluorocarbon to 130 lb leader which we will be doing on our next trip out in a few dates when the weather improves. I just hate to go down in leader size on these size tuna as we have done this in the past to try to get bites but have had bigger Bluefins chew through the leader on a few occasions but you have to do what get the bites and to date we have changed up everything we can without much success. One of our commercial friends have caught 3 today all on light leader without any problems so that is the way to go until at least a decent number of fish show up soon which we are all hoping for with the cold front approaching the next few days. Overall there just are not many tuna around now and only a few very lucky or highly skilled anglers are getting any bites each day but that is and can be the reality of GBT fishing. We will be rigging some very basic lines with just a long (30-50) feet of 130 lb fluorocarbon leader crimped to the top shot with no wind-on connections and give this a try as we want to be as stealth as possible and see if this helps at least get us a legitimate tuna bite. I am sure others have tried already going down in leader size and we do have 100 lb fluorocarbon on board that we may be putting out soon if we continue not to get any bites. I remember so well back 7-10 years ago when we caught them on 8 foot 300 lb regular mono leaders crimped on to our main line and that was how we fished for them back then. One big difference I see these days compared to the late 90's and early 2000's is the lack of bait down off MHC from what is used to be/ We used to see literally thousands of gannets diving on bait balls that often came up to 30 feet of the surface from 50-80 feet deep with huge big red tuna arches above and around the bait balls and I have yet to see anything like this so far this season. When I discuss this with those that fished with us in the early 2000's they find it hard to believe the difference from what they saw back then but it now is a different ball game from a few years ago. It becomes even more evident when I talk to friends that used to hand feed GBT frozen bunker on the wrecks off Hatteras in the early days and catch a dozen or more on any decent day. I do not know if there are less GBT around these days but I do know that the shad (bunker) are not here like they used to be by this time of year down off the southern OBX. My theory is the bunker are staying north off Virginia Beach and that is why there has been such good striper fishing the last few years in the winter up there with very little or no stripers showing up in the MHC area as the water temperatures just have not been cold enough to drive the bunker south. I have not talked to anyone lately from the Southport area (Cape Fear) to find out if they have the bait down currently but possibly some good cold fronts will change all of this but we will have to wait and see. Some of the finest GBT fishing I have ever experienced was in past winters when we had a number of cold fronts make their way south to MHC and we even had to shovel snow out of our cockpit on a few isolated occasions but the GTB fishing was outstanding on those cold winter days from around the holidays until at least the end of January and even into early February some years. Okay enough rambling about all of this as Mother Nature will ultimately make this call and we will have to wait and see how it all plays out but god willing we will be out there pounding away at it every day the weather allows. We flat out do not quit even if it means eating peanut butter sandwiches and on special nights out eating at the Golden Corral.
We heard one local boat tried live bait fishing the other day for the GBT but do not think they had any luck. I know I have tried chunking for GBT, Yellowfins and Stripers down there in past years and it became a shark fest around our boat in a short time once we started chunking. I found out why most boats down in MHC stick to trolling with the amount of sharks down there. I have found when up north trolling for the smaller Bluefins during the summer months that all the different things we do for GBT will work most of the time. What is the most important item in my opinion is finding a pod of fish away from all the other boats if possible and the sheer number of the smaller bluefin will really help produce a decent number of bites trolling with or without a crimp. The biggest secret in my opinion is getting away as far as possible from all the boat traffic and how well you swim your ballyhoo. We scale ours and do all kinds of different things to make them swim better but overall it is pretty easy to catch the smaller ones when there are not a million boats all around you. The trick is to get a bite on days such as weekends when the boat traffic is thick or there is a large chunk fleet set up on the lumps and hills holding the tuna. I know with the one bluefin per day new regulations in 2009 we will be using more circle hooks when trolling for Bluefins with a very short shot of wire targeting Mahi and Wahoo to help put some additional meet in the boat for our customers. Hopefully there may be even some of those smaller Yellowfins around by August to help add to the days catch. I will post more on how we plan to fish in 2009 off Cape May later this spring. We will continue to promote jigging also as we have had some great bluefin fishing the past few years using jigs in the summer and fall months. Overall I trolled almost 100 % in 2007 but last summer we chunked and jigged on almost every trip. This coming season I am going back to the troll targeting Wahoo with the one bluefin per day regulations. The other reason I prefer trolling and jigging is we do not have to use such light leaders to get bites which often resulted in those long drawn out fights as we could not put much drag on the Bluefins or else we would pop the leader. We can get our fish to the boat and released much quicker when trolling plus the opportunity exists for catching Wahoo and other species so that is the way we plan to fish this coming summer at least most of the time. We will be running our baits deeper this coming summer using downriggers with a Z wings rigged with 300 lb spectra plus at least one wwwwwwwwback line as we fish much deeper water than we do in the winter off MHC. More to follow on all of this later this spring. Happy holidays and wishing everyone a prosperous New Year. 2009 should be better for all of that love to fish if fuel prices stay down and hopefully the economy will start to improve in the coming year.
This is picture from a trip back a few years ago when the bunker were thick off MHC in January and when you cut open the stomach of one of these fish the bunker literally fell out on the deck. On this day the air temperatures were in the middle 30's at the dock in the am but it warmed up to the high 50's offshore where the sea temperatures break was. We actually had about 6 inches of snow the day before and we could not find any snow shovels anywhere in MHC to purchase and used 5 gallon buckets to clean the snow off the boat. I believe the main reason that the GBT show off MHC is the amount of bunker (shad) that used to be present and if the bait is not there in numbers then the tuna will go where the food is. We did mark some real good bait balls over on the East side of Lookout Shoals on Thursday's trip and it looked very promising but did not see or hear of any boats around us hooking up so we tried going offshore to the west on Friday's trip in one of the foggiest days we have fished in a while.
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