09/07/10

I've been fishing up North in NH quite a bit lately and it's been pretty good in the Portsmouth area, particularly in the back rivers. Some nice bass, but nothing huge.

Spent some time in Vineyard Sound last week, pre-Earl, looking for False Albacore and Bonito. We spotted a couple of schools of Albies just as we cleared the jetties at Green Pond. We followed them across the Sound and ended up over by State Beach on the Vineyard where there were some more scattered schools of both Albies and Bonito. They were spread out and tough to get on. I managed to get a huge black seabass whihc was delicious on the grill that night.

I took a bussman's holiday last Sunday and Capt. Whiskey Dick and I headed out of Marina Bay in search of tuna. We managed a nice slot fish on a spinning rod. It taped just shy of 58 inches and weighed between 90 and 100 pounds.

08/20/10

Well, it's been a while. I had a bunch of charters over the last few weeks. I consider all of them to be successful because we caught fish, but we didn't always catch what we were after. Either way, it's always good to be on the water. A Previous client, Steve came out to the Cape for a few days and it was great to see him. Although we saw some tuna, we had no viable shots at them. We caught plenty of nice bass and a few scary-big blues but our target was tuna. The next day, I had a family of four from Syracuse, NY onboard. Once again the target was tuna. We had an absolute shit-show pop up in front of us at one point in the A.m., but the fish were moving too fast to even get close to. Managed a few nice bass and blues and had a great whale show up on the Bank.

I've getting to know the waters around the NH seacoast a bit and have done quite well fishing the back rivers for striped bass. There's plenty to learn and I plan on making it a priority.

July 12, 2010

Fished with Bobby and his son, Jay today. We left Barnstable Harbor and headed NW toward Plymouth. Ran into acres of busting tuna on the flat-calm seas. They were tough to get up on but we did manage to get some decent casts into them. It was quite the acrobatic show, with tuna clearing the water and crashing all over. Some of the pods of fish were quite impressive and stayed up for a while, others were ones and twos and down quickly. Bobby had a fish smash a popper right at the side of the boat, but the fish was headed straight at us and we never came tight. The came up pretty hard around the tide change at Noon so we pounded our way back South and did some flats fishing for bass to end the day.

Sorry!

I apologize to any and all folks who have tried to ascertain information from my blog, only to see the same old post forever. The last two years have been pretty personally tumultuous times in my life. In Spring 2008, I developed a stapf infection in my spine following a fairly routine back operation to repair a herniated disk. That injury, and the subsequent recovery, kept me off the water for most of that season. Last Spring, I was told by my Wife of 16 years that she wanted a divorce. While I did get some quality fishing time in, posting to my Blog became much less important than taking care of the things that needed taking care of, and making sure my two beautiful kids were going to be O.K.. I am happy to report that we have all (for the most part) made it through the storm and have begun to piece back together a normal, albeit different, life.

Fishing got off to a great start this year and has continued strong into June. I launch the boat on May 2 with the help of my lovely girlfriend, Sara and proceeded to catch about 15 keeper-sized inside Barnstable Harbor. Last week I had Doug Glen up from Pennsylvania for three days of Charters. Last season Glen had managed his largest striper ever with me, a nice 37-inch fish. He was bound and determined to best his record from last season. Despite a great effort over the three days that had dozens and dozens of nice sized bass coming over the rail, it wasn't until the last fish of the trip that Glen's prize finally came to hand. A beautiful 34-pound bass that ate an unweighted 9-inch squid colored Sluggo! Way to go Glen!



I took the Memorial Day Weekend to be off the water but will be out and about later this week if the weather holds. There are tuna being caught in decent numbers down along the backside of the Cape and I plan on checking them out for myself very soon.

SPOOLED!

Got my ass kicked today by a very large tuna while fishing the southwest corner of Stellwagen Bank. I got there late and figured I would just poke around for a while. I caught a bunch of big, 14 pound blues and was rerigging a damaged butterfly jig around 11:15 a.m.. I was drifting down on a bunch of birds that I figured were only over more nasty bluefish when I looked up from my task and noticed a few tuna slashing under the birds. They may have been eating the bluefish and I should have known that I would be undergunned if that was the case. I ran to the stern and grabbed a spinning rod rigged with a popper. I tossed it out and popped it twice and got a big boil. Two more pops and a hole opened under it. The fish didn't appear to even know it was hooked and continued to swim with the school for quite a while while I fired up the motor and began chasing. This fish was clearly too big to handle on my spinning gear, especially alone on the boat. I was mostly interested in gaining back as much line as I could before breaking off so the fish would not have to swim around trailing a half mile of braid. I steamed down hard on the fish which was still swimming with the school. The next thing I knew the fish had gone deep and doubled back around on me. I could not manage the rod and get the boat in reverse fast enough and the fish went deep under the boat and started dumping the spool again. Now, I had the rod on the starboard side of the boat while the fish was swimming away to the port side. The line eventually chafed off on the bottom of the boat and the fish was gone with 90% of my spool of 65 pound braid trailing behind it. I can only hope the fish went to the bottom and was able to rub the popper out of it jaw. Not a good feeling you left a fish in that condition, but I did try to prevent it from happening and lost.

Fluking With TR

I've been remiss in updating my blog. I haven't done too much fishing as of late because my boat is not currently working. I got it all rigged and ready and went to fire it up only to find out I have some sort of electrical system issue with the ignition. It's at the shop now and will hopefully be ready soon. I did get out during the last week of fluke season to fish with Tom Richardson on his boat out of Mattapoisett. We ran across Buzzards Bay and into Vineyard Sound where we set up drifts outside Quicks Hole. The fishing started off slow but slowly we got our down and began bringing a lot of nice fluke over the rail. They made for a delicious fish fry and it was a very nice, relaxing day on the water.

Toro, Toro, Toro!!!

I was a guest aboard Jack Kent's boat this past Saturday, on a mission to put some tuna in the boat. We met in Duxbury at 0400 and mark, The Kid, Jack and myself headed out to make bait for an hour or so. We had no problem loading the livewell with live pogies and headed east as the sun was peaking over the horizon. Before we even got to the Bank we began seeing lots of life. Whales and shearwaters, gannets and terns were everywhere. The birds were sitting in huge rafts and it was apparent something was pushing bait up toward the surface under the birds. Some of the bird piles definitely had wales working under them but others appeared to have tuna pushing the bait. We picked the piles that did not have whales in them and set our first pogie over the side at 0640. By 0645 we had our first hook up. The fish was big and crashed the pogie hard. Unfortunately the fish did not get the hook and we lost it after it ripped a bunch of line. Next, we set out two pogies on another bird pile and again within minutes we were tight. This time however both pogies got hit. Mark and The Kid worked the rods and we landed our first double.






By 0745 we were done. We continued fishing until 1 pm without another sniff.