Still Think'n Oregon Inlet 11 April

[bobdu11]

Tough day yesterday out there...Tons and tons of boats, but who could blame any of them with such a beautiful day. We did a lot of trolling, started at the 800 line around 500 fathoms and it was a desert, worked our way down to the 500 line south of the point and man, it was acres of big blue fin busting and rolling on top of the water..they were on some huge bait balls, but nobody was hooking up on the troll..I swear I bouned my baits off the nose of at least 100 of those fish and not a sniff !....

Now I'm not set up for jigging, but one of my regular crews is a lure make and he had a bag of jigs....so....pull in some of the Penn 50's, snap some jigs on and let's see what happens...sure enough, I'm hooked up within two minutes of dropping a jig down, break off.....my buddy Dave hooks up, another break off...several pulled hooks and then my man Otter nails one and it sticks....

put on the harness and 40 minutes later a nice 70 incher, 170 pound fish is in the boat....

Got some awesome under water video as well as some great action video, it's in the editing studio now, should be out soon...

great day out there...season is off to a great start !...Bob

[gameover]

way to save the day! crazy how picky those things can be. who would think a bluefin would turn its nose up to a pretty meat bait??

[Captain Fred Archer]

Way to save the day with a real nice one!

Congrats and thanks for the report and picts.

Did you notice what it was eating when you cleaned the fish, or did it barf anything up? Kinda sounds like they were on little bait?

[bobdu11]

this fish only had about a 1 inch crab in it's belly...pretty much completely empty....that really had us scratching our heads as there was 200 feet of bait marks with snakes all through them....very odd....Bob

[HOLWACHAGOT]

Way to get eem Otter!

Hey Bob....I'm not sure if watching them push water and not eat is as bad as not seeing anything but either way it's hell on me. Way to improvise...
Looking very forward to some underwater footage!
Thanks.
Holwachagot

[bobdu11]

Well Geoff I'll tell ya..if we hadn't caught that one then I probably would have said something like...It was great seeing all those fish on top, kind of like National Geographic...but as I was pulling my spread through the schools of big ass Tuna and they were basically flipping me off, that is not what I was saying !...lol...it was very frustrating for sure....

Can't wait to get that video from my buddy...it should be classic....Bob

[Captain Fred Archer]

Bob,

Thanks for the reply on the bait. Reading what you wrote about the fish reminded me of the many, many times that I've seen tuna of all species feeding on pelagic crabs and other small, "whale food". (Whales eat that stuff for good reason - easy to catch and it is a terrific protein source.)

Typically when that sort of stuff is the prey of the day you'll see lots of tunas up top, pushing and boiling, but not hard boils, with birds dipping and perhaps most importantly, no larger bait like flyers, etc. jumping all over the place. Out here when they're on crabs and there are porpoise around and you look hard, you'll see those big, old holeheads eating the little crabs too. I guess if whales do, why shouldn't porpoise?

In my experience, at least, it isn't unusual to meter vast quantities of little bait down deep when this is going on. Nor is it unusual to meter other, bigger looking "bait" down with them, but I have always suspected that they were actually small species feeding on them. Sometimes we saw little bonitos and skipjacks feeding up top too and we even caught some on our little bars. They were obviously after the same bait as the tunas, which showed no interest in them except rarely, when a big tuna would get after them. Usually, the tunas simply ignored them.

Speaking of little bars, models with 3" teasers and chasebaits were absolutely and without any question whatsoever the best lures for catching fish that are on the "whale food", and that included some true cow yellowfin over 200#. That's why even those little bars are rigged on 300# main leaders. Anything lighter than that was begging for trouble!

Finally, one trick that really paid off for us makes good sense, besides being very effective. When this kind of thing was going on, the surface tunas are usually scattered over big areas and in small pods, not big schools. So we trolled quite fast while watching the fish AND the meter. It was no big surprise that we usually found the tuna feeding where the meter showed the concentrations of tiny bait rising up to the surface. When we saw that we slowed down to 3-4 knots or so (crabs and the other tiny stuff cannot swim fast, and in the case of pelagic crabs, can barely swim at all, let alone fast) and usually caught the hell out of the fish.

A couple of final tips for this situation are to load your spread with lots of little bars and run them close together to try to imitate a concentration of chow. The other is to be sure to run those heavy main leaders, and not just because of big fish, but because they often engulf the center bar leader because many tend to try to gulp down several of the little baits on one bite and the teeth that big tunas have can damage the main leader.

This may all sound nuts to some, but take it to the bank, it is the case many, many times. Those fish up top are feeding, not just playing around, but if you don't change up and start matching the hatch, the results will often flat suck. When that happens...

Going little can catch big!

[On Course]

Bob,

Great job as always. Tell Otter way to "Give em Hell". Can't wait to see the video.

Scott

[SeaBiscuit]

Good catchin' as usual on the yellow Southport boat. A toad of a bluefin! Congrats!
SeaBiscuit