It may not be Venezuela but Virginia’s offshore fishing is pretty good right now. Actually, with a couple of professional mates and either Captains Jimmy Grant or Bubba Carter running the boat, I expect we would have had Venezuela quality catches. It was just me and some of my fishing buddies. Give us enough chances and we do OK. We went down to the Triple 0s area yesterday and found a lot of life. There was a good temperature break over the 100 fathom curve. We spent most of our time in about 300 fathoms. We only had half of the spread out when we first were attacked by the white marlin. One hooked itself on a blue marlin bait. We had another hooked up on a small bait but their was a backlash on the drop back. When that came tight, the light-wire circle hook straightened out. That was the theme of the day. It was gorgeous out there. I do not know how many marlin we saw. They grabbed my teasers and dredge. Mostly flat-line bites but we had 3 whites hook themselves on short-rigger big baits as we tried to crank it away from them. In total, we hooked 11 marlin but for various reasons, we caught 5 of those. We saw one blue marlin as it cruised by the boat as we were trying to get baits back out after a dolphin encounter. In addition to dolphin and white marlin, we caught a couple of nice wahoo. We also had tuna busting on the surface and airing out but we never got a bait in front of them. The whites spent a lot of time jumping out of the water for photographs. Hunter Southall and Bernie Sparrer each caught their first marlin. It was Bernie’s 6th citation for the year, earning him his first Expert Angler award. Both Bernie and Hunter got to go swimming back at the dock. It is a good time to get offshore in the Mid-Atlantic right now.
