| Bluefin at the fly
Fished with John Garner on the "Done Deal" on friday. Got a late start leaving Shelter Island around 5 am, put on 2 scoops of beautiful sardines and set a course for 32.25/117.59 out to the east butterfly where we heard reports of bluefin the day before.
Good size swells going out but managed 19 knots of speed getting us into the zone around 8 am or so. Found several paddies with a few holding small yellows. They bit, but not very well as the current was going opposite the wind and swell.
Saw the Pacific Voyager out on the east butterfly and they were on a wide open bite. We could see them through the gyros and they had 6-10 fish going all the time and we could see that they were on bluefin when they brought them up on the gaff. We found a large paddy near the area and soon thereafter one of our crew got picked up on a sardine. 20 minutes later we had our first bluefin scaling 30 pounds. Nice fish.
A while later in a different area picked up a dink bluefin on bait going around 12#. One of the guys sunk a jig as the fish were metering around 100' to 150' all day. Hung another 30# class Bluefin on the iron, so we switched to iron and tried weights with the live bait but no luck.
Stopped on schools of breaking bluefin and had one 30# class fish knock the megabait out of the water but didn't stick.
Left around 3 pm or so, got in late and decided to go back out on Saturday.
Saturday we left around 1 am and got to the area at day break. Different day as the wind was blowing much harder in the morning, really looked and felt like tuna weather. No sooner started trolling and got a solid hook-up on the black & purple rapala. 22-25# class bluefin. Wow, what a way to start off the day. Obviously we were thinking this was going to be epic. Not, no more troll fish other than bonito and yellowtail the rest of the day.
There must have been 30 or more sport boats in the area saturday after only being one there on friday. 100 or so small private boats and yachts. But you could tell the bite had slowed as the sporties started to move around and spread out. Several radio reports of bluefin on the jigs, some abacore on the jigs, lots of small yellows on the paddies. Even reoprts of yellowfin, but you know how reliable some of the radio reports are on the weekend.
Overall good fishing all relatively close to home as many of the saturday reports were closer to the 302 area.
Ending the two trips with 4 Bluefin Tuna and all the small yellowtail we wanted to keep. The bluefin sashimi was awesome and while the yellowtail are small, the firm fillets taste great.
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