East Coast Bluefin Tuna California style

Fish Slayer · Nov-10-2009, 10:22 PM

Guys,

Just thought that I would share some images with you of my recent trip fishing out of Plymouth, Massachusetts. We fished the Stelwagan Bank and targeted Blue fin tuna aboard Black Rose Charters with Captain Rich Antonino. We went 4 for 7 on tuna this trip and caught all of our fish vertical jigging. There is no way to explain how hard the impact is of a 140 to 180 lbs Blue fin tuna when it hits a vertical jig with braided line. These reels are in gear as we are jigging and is much different than fishing a live bait that has the reel in free spool. It is one incredible feeling that sends shock waves through your entire body. What was even more amazing is the tackle that we were using. My fish was landed on the Cedros-10S lever drag reel. This is a small reel normally used for 15-40 lbs tuna fishing out of California and is a high speed reel. I had the reel spooled up with 50-lbs Western Filament line and released the fish in about 25 minutes. Our largest fish that was estimated at 180-lbs was caught vertical jigging on a Salina-80 spinning reel and a 7’0” Cedros jigging rods. After seeing the torture of this, I do not think I ever want to hook one of these giants on spinning tackle. It works just fine, but is a lot of work. Our other fish were all in the 140 to 160 lbs range and were landed on the Cedros-15S lever drag reelsspooled with 65-lbs Vicious line and the Cedros jigging rods.

This fishery is absolutely incredible. I have never seen such volume of tuna. At certain points of our trip we have tuna between 100-200 lbs jumping 360 degrees around the boat. We pretty much saw fish the entire day coming out of the water, which is frustrating and very exciting at the same time. These guys have been getting Blue fin from June through November and there are giants mixed in. You have no idea if you are going to hook a 150-lbs fish ora 500 plus pound fish. I am definitely planning on heading back next season. We have a great product tester who really loves catching these giants on light tackle and jigs, which the guys from Southern California will really get a kick out of.

One of the most amazing things that I saw was on a fish that we lost. We were throwing top water lures at the tuna when they were crashing the surface and one of our guys hooked a huge Blue fin about 25 feet off our transom. The fish came clear out of the water. This tuna was hooked on a Slugo “Tuna Candy” and a Salina-80 spinning reel. It was as if we hooked into a turbo charged Ferrari as it spooled us in 37 seconds and was captured on video. Two of the guys saw the fish as it swam past the boat at full speed and said that it was well over 300-lbs.

John

moto110 · Nov-10-2009, 10:43 PM

who makes the cedro 10s reel? never heard of it. im a guess by the pictures that its okuma. hahaha

Fish Slayer · Nov-10-2009, 10:57 PM

Kevin,
This is the new Okuma high speed lever drag reel from Okuma hitting the market next month. We were fishing with one of the NE magazine working on an article for this fishery. I wanted to try and focus my post more on this incredible fishery and the style of fishing rather than the tackle.
John

ksong · Nov-11-2009, 05:11 PM

Glad West Coast fishermen could taste bluefin fishing in Cape Cod, MA.

It is a world class fishery. I had to give up other fishing opportunities to fish Cape Cod 24 times from June.
This is my last bluefin (170 - 180 lb) caught on a Sevenseas Hooker 220g with 500g Jigging Master custom rod/JM PE5 reel filled with Varivas Avani PE6 (60 lb) on last Thursday.
I am done though it is to over yet.
Now, I got to prepare for 12 day Hurricane Bank trip on the Q105 just after Thanksgivingdays. I am not going to touch any bait and use jigs and poppers for the whole trip as I did in Cape Cod.

get some · Nov-11-2009, 05:15 PM

Kil, I hope you finally get your cow on the jig.
Good Luck!

BloodyL · Nov-11-2009, 05:16 PM

I have been looking at that reel on the Okuma website,looks nice!
caint wait to see it.

ksong · Nov-11-2009, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by get some

Kil, I hope you finally get your cow on the jig.
Good Luck!

Thanks.
I got cow on jigs in 2005 and I hope to land cow on poppers on this trip.

Prototype jigging/popping rods will come from overseas for the trip.

medunn16 · Nov-11-2009, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ksong

Glad West Coast fishermen could taste bluefin fishing in Cape Cod, MA.

It is a world class fishery. I had to give up other fishing opportunities to fish Cape Cod 24 times from June.
This is my last bluefin (170 - 180 lb) caught on a Sevenseas Hooker 220g with 500g Jigging Master custom rod/JM PE5 reel filled with Varivas Avani PE6 (60 lb) on last Thursday.
I am done though it is to over yet.
Now, I got to prepare for 12 day Hurricane Bank trip on the Q105 just after Thanksgivingdays. I am not going to touch any bait and use jigs and poppers for the whole trip as I did in Cape Cod.

Must be nice to be you!

Living the dream!

Fish Slayer · Nov-11-2009, 07:27 PM

Kil, good luck on the Qualifier 105. Keep us posted on how the Yellowfin react to the jigs.

Did you get most of your Bluefin this season at the Cape on vertcal jigs or top water?

John

ksong · Nov-12-2009, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Slayer

Kil, good luck on the Qualifier 105. Keep us posted on how the Yellowfin react to the jigs.

Did you get most of your Bluefin this season at the Cape on vertcal jigs or top water?

John

When you can catch tuna on baits, you can catch them on jigs. However tuna don't respond to jigs anytime though they take baits. They respond to jig only in certain time or on certain contidion which only tuna know.
I tried to figure our their biting patterns, but I gave up.

When I fished cow in lower Baja on the Q105 in 2005 when we had epic cow bites, I didn't get any hit on my jigs daytime though bait fishermen had a blast. However, they finally responded to jigs when it started to getting dark late afternoon.

In early season in Cape Cod, we don't catch many tuna on jigs though bluefin respond to popping very well.
When water temp cools down from Sept, they start to respong to jigs.
Oct is usually the best time for jigging bluefin in Cape Cod. Even so, they don't respond to jig anytime.

When I go to Hurricane Bank, I plan to use popping more daytime and jigging at night.

picasso · Nov-12-2009, 10:31 AM

Good morning Kil,
Are you on the Baker trip? If so it will be a great pleasure to meet you and see you in action.
You mention the Hurricane Bank in your post. Do you have it on some authority that the trip will head there?

With Cowtown starting to go off, I anticipate the whole trip may be spent in that area.
Picasso

ksong · Nov-12-2009, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by picasso

Good morning Kil,
Are you on the Baker trip? If so it will be a great pleasure to meet you and see you in action.
You mention the Hurricane Bank in your post. Do you have it on some authority that the trip will head there?

With Cowtown starting to go off, I anticipate the whole trip may be spent in that area.
Picasso

I am looking forward to fishing with you.
I hope they sail as they are looking for a few more fishermen now.
I signed the trip as John Baker said it goes to Hurricane Bank and I double checked with Q105. If they don't go to Hurricane Bank, I might cancel my trip. I just want to fish Hurricane bank day and night for four days instead of trolling all day.
Cowtown can be hit and miss at best. Even we had epic trip in 2005 by landing over 70 tuna over 200 lb, we fished only two full days and we spent rest of days for searching on troll.