One word describes our first tuna trip of the season, WOW!!! What a day we had on the water today. It may have not been fish after fish but we managed to put a 67", 185lb bluefin in the box right off the bat today. Today I had my "tuna wrangler" team on board for the day with my buddy Rob and my brother Bob. The weather was forecast to be pretty nasty, thunderstorms, heavy rain, tornado watch with a small craft advisory however, when I woke up at 4:15, the winds were pretty light and it looked like we were a go for the day. I checked the local radar to see what the weather looked like and the radar map was clean. So we went.
We met at Brewer's Plymouth Marine at 5am. Our goal was to find tuna, get hooked up early and get off the water early just in case the winds decided to blow. We almost had near perfect execution to that plan today, the only difference is we stayed on the water longer. We pulled out of the slip and made our way out of Plymouth. When we came around the point, we were surprised with the conditions we faced, nearly no wind and flat calm seas. It was going to be a fast ride across the bay. We were heading over to start our tuna hunt around the Peaked Hill area. About 35 minutes later, we arrived. We were greeted to light winds, rippled waters with diving birds on bait. We had a choice to make, pull rubbers to break in our new Lee Outriggers or try to find fish up top to cast to. While we were slowly motoring along, the tell tail tuna sign showed up. Clouds of bait on the sonar with a heavy ripple on the surface of the calm waters. That ripple is the sign of big fish moving just under the surface of the water, tuna?? The birds were looking under the water, all the signs were good. We rigged up the spinning rods and started casting. Within minutes of my first cast, a fish boiled on my lure. Second cast, fish on!! It was the wrong fish, it was a blue fish. We made a few more casts and there were no more hits. By this point, our blood was flowing and we were ready to go.
We decided to move south a bit and start on the troll to try and cover a lot of water. If we found fish on top, we would stop and cast but it was time to troll and put the new outriggers to the test. We rigged the bars, got them all out in the water, we were fishing a 4-5 rod squid bar spread. What was nice to see is that if we wanted to, we could fish a 6-8 rod spread. I said to the guys, man, this boat is rigged perfectly now, we just need the tuna bite to happen. We were on the troll for fish!!! After about an hour of moving around, we hit slack tide and it was like someone turned on the lights!!! All of a sudden the fish finder lit up with bait and tuna. Then just after that, the surface erupted with tuna popping up all over. As we patiently watched and made slight adjustments, my brother says, man, that orange squid bar is riding real nice. Within minutes, bamm, the port rigger goes off and would you know, it was the orange bar that was taken down. Rob yells fish on and all you could hear was that sweet sound of the line screaming off the reel.
We cleared the lines and strapped Bob into the stand up harness. After 2 quick runs, he had the fish straight down off the starboard rear of the boat. Crank after crank, the fish was coming up. Rob was the leader/gaff man today and I was the captain/poon man. As the fish came up, we got a nice shot of silver and we knew it was a decent fish, not a giant but pretty close. Rob leadered the fish and I had a nice clean shot with the poon. The fish was stuck, gaffed and came over the rails after about 40 minutes. Nice fish and credit to Bob for taking in his first bluefin of his career. We bled the fish and put it in the box on ice. Sushi anyone!!?
After that fish, we trolled around for about another hour and the fish just disappeared. We still did not have any wind so we decided to move inshore a bit and try to get our limit of bass. We had what I would call a triple play today. Bluefin tuna, our limit of bass and one blue fish. Not bad for an early on/early off day. The Jersey Girl strikes again. Around 1pm, the winds started to kick up and we decided to head for home. It was the right decision because when we hit 8 miles out of Plymouth, the winds were howling. Easily blowing 20-30. In the end, we arrived back to the dock safely with a boat load of nice fish!!! So now that the ice is broken, come on and get in on the early season tuna action. Make a combo trip out of it and get your limit of tuna and bass in the same day!!! Contact Captain Roland Lizotte for booking details at 774-437-1882.
