I am no professional tuna fisherman, but I do get a bit excited when I hear about 800lb fish being caught!
That was all I needed to hear this past Monday to get me out of bed at 3AM. By 3:05AM I was wide awake and ready to rock and roll.
For the first time all season I felt my friend Jason Mazzola and I had a legitimate chance of catching a giant bluefin.
There Is No Better Way To Spend A Monday!
After a solid batch of NE winds, the seas were finally calm, and Jason and I enjoyed a spectacular ride out.
We figured we would be able to jig up live bait at the tuna grounds, but I personally prefer to arrive with some live bait in the tank.
So we stopped at a place where Jay has found mackerel all season long.
Within five minutes I began hooking mackerel.
Soon Jay hooked a few as well.
We now were confident we had enough bait to get through the morning.
Anchoring Up And Getting Underway
With baits in the tank we headed northeast and I was amazed at the amount of bird life we encountered along the way. There was little doubt in my mind that the waters around our boat were chock full of sand eels.
We anchored up within sight of a fleet of around 30 boats. Still we had plenty of room all to ourselves - which is always terrific.
We fished one mackerel under a kite.
The kite flies high in the sky. One of our fishing lines is attached to the kite, which keeps the mackerel right on the surface.
When a giant tuna eats a kite bait, the bite can be spectacular. Picture a Volkswagen Beetle falling from the sky and smacking into the ocean.
That is what the bite resembles!
We then placed three live mackerel down deep, at varying depths. We controlled the depth by using balloons, which is one of the 5 ways I like to fish live bait on Cape Cod.
It's sorta like fishing with a bobber at your local pond but on steroids, because the fish out here could be 10 feet long and weigh 1,000 pounds.
Amazing Amounts Of Huge Mackerel
We weren't able to purchase chum for this trip so I figured I would try and jig up more mackerel to use as chum. Maybe I could catch enough mackerel to get us through a day of chumming.
15 minutes later I had filled a 5 gallon bucket!
You could even say the mackerel fishing was world class! It took no trouble and no time at all to catch enough mackerel to use as chum.
We had live bait and we had fresh chum. Seas were calm and skies were clear. The bright sun felt like summer.
We were in business!
Who Let The Dogs Out?
Then the dogfish moved in...
Dogfish are the ultimate party-poopers. They are Debbie-Downers.
Dogfish make tuna fishing difficult because they eat precious live baits and ruin tackle. Dogfish chaff lines and wreak havoc. On top of all that they have a dorsal spine that can inflict damage.
Checking Baits & Waiting For The Bite
It was now 11AM. Tuna-wise it had been an uneventful morning, but the bait was here in droves so both Jay and I felt confident.
There had been big tuna caught over the past several days and they had been taken somewhere in the vicinity of where we were fishing.
We settled into a routine of chumming and checking baits, all the while waiting eagerly for a rod to bend and a drag to scream.
