We made another of our dedicated trips for science on Saturday. Just 3 of us. I worked Danny Forehand and Chris Boyce to death. We were targeting young-of-the-year bluefin tuna for Dr. John Graves. Put out a spread of 4 Spanish mackerel-sized Clark spoons off the transom, a blue marlin bait (for a blue marlin tagging study) off each short rigger, and a naked ballyhoo (on circle hooks) off each long rigger for the white marlin which are around. We never saw a blue. We saw 3 white marlin. One did not bite anything, one tried to eat a blue marlin bait, the other we just missed on the long rigger. We caught 9 dolphin and we caught 115 tuna creatures: skipjacks, little tuny, blackfins, bluefins, bullet tuna, and I'm not sure what else. Most are about 12 inches long. We lost plenty as we were just swinging them over the side on those little spoons. Note: my boat is permitted to keep undersized tuna for research. For Dr. Graves' study, he just needs a little finlet for DNA analysis so anyone can collect a finlet and release the fish. Other scientists, up and down the coast want other stuff (otoliths, livers, hearts, and so on) thus the special permit to keep a number of these young of the year fish. We have caught some big fish doing this on previous little tuna trips for science. One time we were catching these young of the year bluefins and a 128 pound bluefin ate one of the spoons and we managed to catch it. We were fishing the Cigar Saturday. One white was right on top of it. The other two were east in 30 fathoms. Other boats fishing the canyon ran into baby tuna also.I’m waiting on the scientist to tell what tuna we caught. Hopefully, a good number will be bluefins. These will be the 27-30 inch fish on 26 Mile Hill next summer. There has been very few age 0, 1, and 2 year fish around over the past 3 years. The bluefins have been 45 inches and up. Maybe we have finally had a good spawn.

On Monday, we made a short trip to the Chesapeake Light Tower to fish for jacks. We did not catch any. We did see "Daddy’s Girl Too" catch a big crevalle. A little while later, they called us on the radio to invite us to a school of cobia they had found west of the tower. Very cool of them. We ran east to the Gulf Hustler to look for jacks again. We found sea bass, bluefish and spadefish.
Photo is of Charles Southall and a spadefish.

Great report as always thanks

Mark

Ken, is a juvenile false albacore (little tuny) and bullet tuna the same or different species? I've always thought they were the same, I thought it just depended on where you lived for what you called them.

Great report...we've been catching a ton of these guys on cedar plugs in the flat....I think they're bluefin but can't really tell.....Bob

Ill throw a guess at Baby YFT.

Bullet tuna and frigate tuna may or may not be the same species. False albacore or little tuny are another species.

We caught a mixture of blackfin and bluefin. Almost 50-50. They look very similar. The blackfins had a pectoral fin which reached to the notch in the dorsal fins. The bluefin's pectoral fins were well short of the notch. A yellowfin is supposed to have a pectoral which reaches pass the dorsal notch. None of our tuna had that.

Fins can be misleading. You can tell by counting the gill rakers but you pretty much have to kill the fish to count those.

We caught a little tuna on Saturday in 30 fathoms inside the canyon. It looked real similar to the one in the picture in the post a couple above this one. Ours had finlets that were all black, a large eye, and a gold stripe down the side that was wider at the head and tapered towards the tail. We assumed it was a blackfin. It actually hit the 3 1/2 drone on a planer rod and unfortunately was a fatal blow to the little guy, he weighed 3 lbs at most.

I expect you are right with your ID.

Results of the tuna count minus the false albacore, skippies and stuff:

Ken:


Many thanks for all of the samples!


I drove from your place straight to VIMS and brought out three smaller coolers to take the fish up to my cold room (no, I couldn't manage the big cooler by myself!). I found about four bullet tuna and two skipjack hiding among the 79 baby tunas. We sampled the fish this morning, counting gill rakers. It was split pretty evenly among bluefin (33) and blackfin (46). As you thought, the short (bluefin) and long (blackfin) pectorals corresponded with the gill raker counts.


A sample of 33 baby bluefin is fantastic. We got 15 the last time we ran into them in 2003. In addition to these bigger babies, we have a sample of 34 post-larvae taken from the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago. In addition to the baby bluefin, we now have samples of adult bluefin taken on the Gulf of Mexico spawning grounds in 2007 and 2008. NMFS put observers on all the longliners fishing in the Gulf for yellowfin and they sampled every dead bluefin -- we got 40+ individuals from each year.
Now, using the baby and spawners we can get a very good genetic profile of the western spawning stock and compare that with the Mediterranean (we have several years of yearling fish from there). Using the genetic profiles from the two spawning areas we can now assign the juvenile bluefin that show up off our coast (1, 2, 3, etc. year old fish) to a spawning area and determine the importance of Med fish to our fishery.


I'd love to get some more fish if possible.
Cheers,


John

While we should all be concerned with the health of the bluefin population has anyone questioned at a regulatory level the apparent disappearance of yellowfins along the mid-Atlantic? In 2005 we averaged 5 YFT per trip and never went out without catching at least one or two. From 2006 to present I haven't caught more than 5 YFT total. I run out about 8 times a year for them, last year we went 1 for 2 on YFT and so far this year we are 2 for 3 on YFT all coming off the same trip in early June. We have done much better on BFT going 5 for 10 this year through our first 3 trips and blanked on tuna since late July. Last year the water was really warm (80+ degrees) through most of the summer. This year water temps appear to be lower, this past week we were seeing temps around 77 degrees. Does not seem like the guys to the north are doing that much better either. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I should would like to see a scientific explanation for the cause.

Great info Ken!

As far as the yellowfin scene...I think the fish are out deeper, or from recent markings on fishfinders, deep under the thermoclines where the majority of the bait is holding. We had a boat report seeing a good class of yellowfins in with the skippies south of the 44 fathom wreck last Saturday, and the marks we had on the machines I would say confirmed that. With all the bait down deep...why come up to the surface. The blows we had early in the summer kept us docked, while the tuna went right past us to the northern canyons...those fellas had a pretty descent year. I'm hoping the fall return migration keeps them off VA for a while...hopefully with calm winds.