More Slaying from Kilsong

johndtuttle · Oct-28-2009, 03:07 PM

Live bait for bluefin is fun too.

Bluefin popping last Sunday and Monday was fantastic in Southwest Corner of Stellwagen Bank early in th morning though smaller tuna dominated.

I went with Capt Jimmy of the No Time with two fishermen from Korea and Yong yesterday(10-27).
Jimmy loves to use live baits, but I insisted to go without baits as popping was great on Sun and Monday and I didn't want to lose fishing time to catch baits as they bite only 2 hours until 9:00 am on Monday.
Jimmy said we could catch whiting only one mile from fishing spot in SW corner and I had no reason to object it as I missed whiting fishing since 1991 in NY area.

We we got the SW Corner, we didn't see much bird action. When I saw Jimmy put down lines with live whiting, I knew I had to change my plan from popping to jigging.

While drifing with other fleet, we didn't get any bites. Jimmy went to the spot he liked and we immediately marked some tuna.
He used Park's Daiwa Mura Mura Expedition rod/Ocear Jigger 5000P for live bait and put the rod in the rod holer. Soon after, we heard big breaking sound, when we turned the rod got broken in half just below the ree
l seat and the rod/reel were gone !!!
As soon as I had a hit on my Grey Hooker jig another rod with live whiting went off. I let Park fight the fish and Yong fought other tuna.

continued after lunch.

johndtuttle · Oct-28-2009, 03:07 PM

Kilsong's post Cont:

The tuna I hooked up on my jig was a nice one as it almost dumped over 200 yards of line on 22 - 23 lbs drag. Park fought the fish about 30 minutes, but the main line of Varivas Avani BIgone PE6 lines got broken.

The other fish was fought by Yong and Jin alternately and we finally landed after long fight. Korean prototype rods were used for both fish.
The jigging rod has 400 lbs dead lifting power an the light popping rod with Stella 2000 has over 100 lbs dead lifting power.
As you see in the pictures, the popping rod was bent most 180 degree, but it didn't break.

The fish was not small in 180 lbs range with 67 inches.
Shin,Korean TV host said to me that those rod can not be broken while fishing and I start to believe it. They are making prototype rods for me accoring to my specs. All I have to do is to give them info what kind of action I like.

johndtuttle · Oct-28-2009, 04:14 PM

And Cont...

As expected, fishing slowed down after 9:30 am. fishing slowed down and we jigged for an hour for nothing as we didn't have any live bait.
We went for more whiting for bait. When we came back to SW Corner, there were only few boats there. Jimmy decided to use flat line without sinker as dogfish attacked any live whiting when fished deep and it worked like magic.

It was strange that we didn't mark many tuna on the screen, but as soon as we put live bait on the line, we heard screaming sound.
While fighting a nice bluefin, Jimmy sent another live whiting and we had an instant hookup. While they were fighting, I tried to jig for nothing.
The first tuna which was caught on a Korean prototype popping rod was released. It looked bigger than the tuna we kept. Park fought the second tuna on Korean prototype jigging rod we lost very close to the boat as tuna pulled the cirvcle hook. As weather got deteriorated and we felt enough, we headed for the dock around 1:30 pm.

SD Carp · Oct-28-2009, 04:14 PM

great action on the spinners.......love it

cadiver · Nov-03-2009, 04:39 PM

You guys rock. Congrat's on the late season trip. The sushi looks great!!!

Hunter III · Nov-07-2009, 06:45 PM

Great fish, great food, great day. I would offer a comment on your rod selection. The fact that the rod will not break is impressive. Your rods in my opinion are fully noodled. That is to say overloaded. It appears to me that the rods are flexing thoughout their length in response to load rather than resisting the flex as the rod tip rotates down. I have fought several size large bluefin that wore a buch off people out or ended breaking off simply because the angler could not put enough pressure on the fish. Rods such as yours have their lever diminish to essentially zero. As the length of the lever diminishes so does the lifting power. I would suggest a hybrid rod that has a soft tip to facilitate popping and a stiff butt section to facilitate putting the hammer on the fish. I have not been able to buy such a blank. I build all my own rods and have been experimenting with stiffining the butt section of an excellent jigging rod by inserting a second blank into the rod. The results have been very promising. I have built a rod that has a tip (upper 40% of length) that loads very nicely for casting and jigging and will roll as your rods do to absorb the shock loads that bluefin can generate. At the 60% mark the rod stiffins significantly. Late in the fight when you are in the straight up and down mode the stiff butt section allows us to put the heat to the fish.

We'll be out there tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get to test out the new design.

H3