Fished aboard my friend Kim's boat out of Wachapreague this weekend. Decided to go bluefinning because that's what's biting. Started out near Lumpy on Thursday trolling a full spread. 20 minutes in, we got a kingfish on the planer rod. Boxed him and a half hour later, the port long rigger rod starts screaming. I was on the rod. A couple minutes into the fight the reel is peeling out line so fast I thought it was gonna melt! 25 lbs of drag did nothing to slow this one. Cleared the lines and worked the fish closer to the boat. I said "what's this other line?" Turns out in all the excitement, the other long rigger never got cleared. It ended up in the prop and across the line with the fish. It cut through the fish line before we could get 'em uncrossed.
Oh well, the spread went back out and before long we had 2 on at once. This time we really cleared all the lines. The close fish got to the boat. The captain had the leader. When the fish did a death roll, it also flipped over. The line went under it's gill plate and when it pulled, the line got cut off by the gill plate. The line also cut the fish's gills and there was a big cloud of blood. If I had to guess, I'd say it's shark food. No time to mourn that one. The second one came in fine. It weighed in at 84 lbs at Captain Zed's.
Friday we got serious and just put 2 long rigger lines waaaay back and 2 short rigger lines way back. At about 9am, the starboard short rigger goes off. After Thursday's warm up we were ready, and it's a good thing. This one was screaming out drag pretty good, too. We had the Captain in the chair, because he always manages to get away without cranking a tuna on all these trips. We settled into a tough fight and after about 35 minutes we could see the leader. We set all the bluefin rods up with 25' 130lb wind ons. The first time we saw color was just like every other time. After the next death circle we gained some line and and got a better look. It was a nice one. The next circle-"Hey Jordan! We're gonna need 2 gaffs in this one!" I stuck her with the 6'' gaff and Jordan stuck it with the 4" gaff just as mine was starting to straighten. Ok, now what? The other 2 guys held the gaffs, while I put the boat in gear. The tail planed to the surface and I got a dock line around it. We worked it around the stern and slid it onto the swim platform. The 3 of us tried lifting it into the boat every way we could think of, but it wasn't gonna happen. We called our friends in the area and they came to lend some extra hands. Just as tey wer about 10' from us and beginning to bring in their spread, they hooked up! We watched as they fought the fish. I saw some water being pushed up about 30 yards from the boat and cast a jig. Now I was hooked up! A few minutes later I had a 20 lb Yellowfin in sight, but the hook pulled. When the guys finally boxed their fish, 2 of them came over and lent a hand. We slid it into a 40" X 80" fish bag and iced it down. Thursday they made fun of the oversized fish bag, Friday we looked like geniuses. When we came in we straightened another gaff and broke one getting on the scale. It measured 73.5" long with a 50" girth.The weight was 226 lbs.
Saturday we slept in til 6am. Another guy joined us to fish, so we figured we'd put him on one, then search for some dolphin and yellowfin. We trolled all day without a pull. About thirty seconds before we were gonna pull the lines in and head home-fish on! We subdued this one in less than 15 minutes. It was another 80-90lb class bluefin. We cut it loose and headed for the barn. Not the best trip for numbers or variety, but the biggest tuna any of us have ever caught.
Bill