What a difference over just a few days. June Bug took the Chris Marino/Harry Downs party offshore on Friday, August 8, 2008. We left at midnight and started fishing at 4 a.m. expecting a continuation of the very decent early morning bite. We started fishing inshore of the Spencer based on good reports from a few days previously even though I do not especially like fishing there from an historical perspective. There were 7 boats that had overnighted and none reported any overnight activity at all. Not a good omen.

At daylight, we realized the the wa-a-a-a-a-yback splash bar was taking drag off an 80# reel slowly but steadily and realized that we'd been dragging some poor fish for a while. Sure enough, it turned out to be a little Yellowfin tuna well under the 27" limit. We gently sent the little tyke back to his mother.

We worked from the 40 fathom to the 200 fathom lines back and forth keeping the sun angle in mind as we like to do early in the day. Not another touch so we started working our way around the northeast corner of the Spencer heading for the Lindenkohl.

Halfway to the Lindenkohl in about 70 fathoms we had 4 or 5 rods go down and 3 were hooked solidly. One got away, one was a keeper, and the other was a short Yellowfin. As the party fought the fish, a nice Blue Marlin zig zagged across the remaining baits several times but didn't pick any up. He looked to be about 200 pounds or so.

We took a pass across the southwest corner to test the deeper water and didn't find anything there either. After working the edges of the Lindenkohl including all of our favorite bumps and lumps, we started working inshore. We got covered again by small Yellowfins about 3 miles in from the tip. One keeper and the rest shorts.

The rest of the day was spent cranking in Skipjacks.

The water conditions were unusual. The water was especially "dirty" in that the visability was minimal at best. Skipjacks and Yellowfins are shiny fish but we could not see them in the water until they were about 5 feet under the surface. The water color was a dark green. Water temps were even all over at 79.5 for the morning climbing to 80.2 after the sun warmed things after noon. There were no color changes.

We saw little bait on the surface and little on the color machine. No whales and only one small pod of porpoise. Wave heights on the way out were 2 to 4 and were 3 to 5 in the deeper areas.

We heard from boats up in the Carteret and Toms and no one did anything last Friday. If any boat caught fish, they were barely legal Yellowfins.

Capt. Lindsay Fuller
Cell 609-685-2839

http://www.Fish-JuneBug.com

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__________________
Capt. Lindsay Fuller
June Bug Charters
Cell 609-685-2839
CaptLindsay@Fish-JuneBug.com
http://www.Fish-JuneBug.com
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