9/20/09:
Left dock at 6am for the 2 hour run to the tuna grounds. We were greeted by clear blue skies and flat calm seas. We stopped about 1/2 mile short of the fleet and began to look for schools of bait and other signs of life before we started chunking. I put out a small jet lure and a ballyhoo while we had a look around just in case. We began to mark a few small schools of sandeels, and saw a whale and some skipjack tuna and little tunny busting the surface and decided to start chunking. Nothing hit the trolled lures, but a little tunny decided to eat the jet lure as it hung 10ft below the boat while I was setting out the chunk baits
. We set one rod on the bottom and drifted unweighted baits with the chunks of fish chummed over the side.The bottom rod quickly bent over and we brought up a 15lb bluefish, which is usually not a good sign. Reset the bottom rod and quickly hooked up a little tunny. I was drifting baits on my Avet with straight power pro and a 30lb fluorocarbon leader and a small circle hook (and the drag close to maxed out). We started to mark fish on the fishfinder and I quickly caught a skipjack tuna and more little tunny on the drift baits. The next bait I drifted back was soon taken by a much larger fish that proceeded to melt line off the spool at a rate that screamed tuna. After a tough fight, I finally boated a 40+lb bluefin tuna. We quickly began drifting baits back out and hooked another 2 tuna in the 40-50lb class. One fish pulled the hook and we released a second bluefin on the Avet.
Fished a little longer but the bait and the fish had scattered. Caught a few more huge bluefish and little tunny before we headed in.
One boat in the fleet had a large great white shark behind his boat that proceeded to eat all the fish he hooked.
Here are the pics:
I am hoping to do some tuna fishing next year.
