Kurt Saraceno

We left Osterville Harbor on July 16th, after gassing and loading the boat up with rods, single lures, and spreader bars.

There was a small debate on the boat regarding where to fish, but after looking at the water temp charts we decided to head to this offshore canyon.

We cruised out to the canyon at around 32knots, which made for a two and a half hour ride. Once we arrived at the tip of the canyon at around 6pm, we immediately put out an eight-rod spread.

This is primetime for big eye tuna to start to rise from the depths, so we set our big eye spread, which consists of spreader bars and daisy chains. There was a fleet of about thirty boats working the tip of the canyon.

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Most of the boats working the canyon have been hooking up to yellowfin, mahi mahi, blue marlin, and even giant bluefin tuna. At around 7:15pm everyone on the boat was watching the spread when a very large tuna crashed on a purple squid bar.

There was a huge explosion and the line snapped out of the outrigger hard and mono was being ripped off the reel. We jumped into action and reeled in all the remaining rods to prevent tangles.

With almost four hundred yards taken off the reel on the fish’s first run, we all expected a tough fight. My dad strapped into the belt and harness to fight this fish.

After around thirty minutes the double line emerged from the water and a crew member started to take wraps on the fish. He inched the fish closer and closer, when finally the fish got within gaff range and I nailed the 100 plus pound yellowfin through the gill plate and out through the eye socket.

We then hauled the huge yellowfin over the side of the boat and tossed the fish into the coffin box. After cleaning up the fish and the boat it was around 8:30pm.

Since it was dark out we decided it was a good idea to only troll only four lines to prevent tangles. A half hour later one-rod went off and then a second one doubled over. Both fish took huge runs and then suddenly they popped off.

We reeled up the spreader bars and the mainline was sliced on both of them. We believe a pack of wahoo attacked the spread and cut us off. For years we’ve been trying to catch a wahoo and time after time the wahoo destroy our fluoro carbon leaders with their extremely sharp teeth.

We trolled around the canyon for the rest of the night without a bite, but in the morning everything seemed to turn on. Boats around us hooked up to big eye tuna and yellowfin. We got into some good yellowfin action about a mile away from the fleet.

Yellowfin were jumping around the boat and every time we dragged our lures through a school of fish at least two rods would go down.

It was very consistent yellowfin action for us, but unfortunately we were not able to catch a bigeye tuna or a wahoo.

After an action packed morning of good fishing we packed it in with about twelve yellowfin up to 100lbs. We will try again soon for the elusive wahoo and big eye.