Tuna Fishing -Trolling and Casting
It is getting harder to find the time now with the kids back in school and their after school activities (Karate and Soccer) to just take off for the whole day on the boat in search of Tuna. Even with the kids busy schedule coupled with my work schedule I still find some time for the hunt. The other day I managed to steal a few hours to continue my pursuit. We set out of Green Harbor about 10:30am and set a course northeast about 30miles just across the shipping lanes. There were some birds working the area so I we set up a squid spreader bar and two squid chains on three separate trolling reels and ran them at different distances (between 50 and 100 yards) behind the boat. Each setup was a slightly different color pattern and size. After about 20 minutes we began to see Yellowfin break the water. We trolled through the schools several times without I strike. I wish I could have devoted more time because I am dying to land one on my new Penn International but time would not permit on this day. The Tuna were moving very fast and we could not keep pace with the action while trolling so I pulled in all of the rigs to give chase. Plan “B” was to get along side of the surfacing schools and cast a small shiner lure directly into the action. While we were able to get close enough I was not able to hook one. On a few occasions we had some pretty large Tuna jump out of the water directly in front of the boat. If we only had another hour or two we would have defiantly hooked up. Ah but alas the school bus was going to deliver the kids soon so we could not stay with it. 3 hours is simply not enough time to get out where you need to be and get the job done. It was exciting just the same. While we were out there we saw a pod of Right Whales surface several times. Once was fairly close to the boat (within 70yards!).