Question? Why so much labrador current?

[Deep C]

Jake
I was hoping that was the case here last week... We had some pretty nice water inside and the offshore bite had been dead. Instead of dolphin or bluefins though all we found was skippies and little tunny... Had bait and had oodles of fish just nothing worth putting on a table...
Last year at this time inside we had dolphin on every single pot and we have a lot of pots up here. This year I have not seen the first one...

[capt. jakeg]

Thanks for that Calebw. thats exactly what I am talking about. Look at how hard that cold water is pushing offshore there off jersey. Thats on the surface too. If its pushing that hard on the surface, just imagine what its doing subsurface. Unlike the gulfstream which off the east coast is a surface current, the labrabor current is crammed into the shallows of the shore and pushes the entire water column. It takes some serious current to push that sort of cold water at that speed along the surface. There is no way gulf stream eddies can overrun that type of current. My question is why is it running so hard like that right now?

Deep we had plenty of the fat alberts and bonitas inshore here too. There have only been 2 wahoos in all of virginia over 25 pounds caught in 2009. They just arent here. Dont look for us to send you the chickens, they are sticking with the current, which puts them on a bline from hatteras to the azores or some other dumbass place where once they get past NC no ones ever gonna catch em.

[Flatdog]

mmmmmmm... Kemo sabi them long arrows all point from warm to cold, now look to the north lab coast in following pic

[bigg09]

jake, i don't know what is going to happen after this blow, but this is the time of year where i always do really well on the dolphin from the gulf hustler to the tower and out to the bouy 5 ene of the tower. that bumping bottom just outside the tower is really good. most of the water inside is fat alberts and bluefish. i fished last sunday and had a 10# mahi, but was worried about fuel b/c i didn't top off and started trolling in (dad's word eneded up being ok, but i still didn't want to push it). is was only FA's and tons of bluefish inside the tower. i am sure if i stayed just east of the tower i would have been loaded up with mahi in the afternoon. the cigar minows were starting to come to the surface and that is always a good sign. if the water doesn't get below 75 the mahi will be in there for a month or so. i love watching all the big boats blow right past me in my panga. last year i trolled from the tower to the bouy and then fished the triangle area. had a half a cooler full of 4-20# mahi and raised 2 sails and a white at the triangles. most of the bites came on little feather and squid chains and rattle jets with 3-4 inch chains in front of them. caught a few on the ballyhoos, but most came on the naked dolphin lures. two years ago i had a 43" drum on a chuggler with a ballyhoo and a wahoo bite off by the bouy outside the tower. I think we just get like you said, so worried about fishing inside that you offend the charter/second guess ourselves, but i think that with all the data that we have available now we tend to run right over the fish like that article that tred barta wrote a couple years ago. good thing that i don't take my small boat out that far, it has made me fish were i can. I mean really, how ofter do you see people fishing the hot dog and fingers area any more (except early for bft's. those used to be the hot spot and wayne's world, but now everybody is shooting by the bait and going for the breaks. Randy and i have been talking about for two years ago and we know we are running right by fish but it is often so hard to pull the throttles back. Even thought there is a lot of merrit to the currents and temp, i still think that alot of us are just running past the fish and have been using bottom fish as a backup. who knows? Casey

[capt. jakeg]

You are right Casey. I used to fish around that tower a bunch too and always caught fish in there. My first sail I ever caught came back in there when I was about 12 years old. I never caught a wahoo in there though. I do fish a lot further inshore this time of year when the wahoos traditionally start showing.

[Bert Rodgers]

The current SST s shows a serious chunk of Gulf Stream eddy sweeping in on the Jersey Canyons.


http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs/sat_da...8.2123.n15.jpg

Bert

[Handyman]

Deep, thanks for sending them our way. Hopefully we can make a sept tuna bite for a while. We had a good shot of the pups for two weeks in june then two good weeks of the boscos but there aint been a consistent bite since. I did have a couple of whoopsies while marlin fishing and caught three or four tunas each time (always fun hooking tunas on dink rigs) , but basically they have been absent here.

Also we had part of that incredible dolphin bite in late may and early june and they have been gone as well. Not just the gaffers gone but even the chickens too. I think the pretty water was way inside though and just nobody was dumb enough to fish it but me. A couple days before this blow started, I went and pulled ballyhoos 5-7 miles off the beach. In two months of fishing 20-50 fathoms I hadn't caught more than three or four dolphin and most of those were chickens. Anyways, I went and pulled ballyhoos real close expecting a king or a cuda and ended up going five for seven on gaffers to 21#- in two hours. Maybe I just lucked into them, but I think more likely, we have been running way past the dolphin bite here. I'd feel like a total dick though if my charter paid me to take them offshore and left the dock rigged up ran for twelve minutes then set out lines.

Jake-I fished one day years ago out of barbados. The mate had a small playmate cooler with the rollback top-the one that holds about four beers- and just as we cleared the breakwater the captain backed off, the mate reached in the cooler, pulled out four prerigged hoos and let out the lines. Of course I start yelling WTF and am thinking rip-off, until, right after the Capt asks me do I want to fish or boat ride, all four lines start screaming. We tore them up till we had enough, pulled the lines in and rode the 5 miles back to the dock. Your charters would probably be bragging, not complaining

[Deep C]

Jake-I fished one day years ago out of barbados. The mate had a small playmate cooler with the rollback top-the one that holds about four beers- and just as we cleared the breakwater the captain backed off, the mate reached in the cooler, pulled out four prerigged hoos and let out the lines. Of course I start yelling WTF and am thinking rip-off, until, right after the Capt asks me do I want to fish or boat ride, all four lines start screaming. We tore them up till we had enough, pulled the lines in and rode the 5 miles back to the dock. Your charters would probably be bragging, not complaining

Sounds like how it is at Chub Cay... Yeah you can run fourteen miles to the corner and start but many a day its right at the cut. Clear the break water and start laying down the riggers... Second or third bait going out and something good already piles on you...

[Fish Dad]

Jake, interesting thread. I don't know that see the answer in any of the respones but I can verify that the labrador is still ripping hard. I bottom dropped in the afternoon on Saturday (12 Sep 09) and even though the winds had shifted south, we drifted against the wind with the current winning out.



All I know is a common sense answer. When two opposing forces meet each other, in this the labrador meeting the gulf stream, the stronger current will win. So it's either the gulf stream is slowing down (at least in the mid-atlantic) or the labrador has gained strength. I don't know which is the answer and I don't know why. But there is no question that the labrador is still ripping hard is what is responsible for keeping the stream from visiting our neighborhood. Probably why the mahi are scarce. But interestingly, the best tuna day I had this year was smack in the middle of the labrador current in 65 degree water in June 2009 with all those barely legal tuna feeding on squid that were everywhere.