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One of the most difficult road blocks we have thus far encountered in our pursuit of giant tuna is procuring a reliable source of high quality live bait. In the tuna world, this means having a bait pen chock full of live bluefish.
In a perfect world, we would have a giant bait cage filled to the brim with lively, 15-20 inch juvenile blues. However in reality, this is a very difficult proposition.
First off you need to have a bait pen. Then you need to have an accessible spot to keep it. After that you need to catch the bluefish. Of course you need to transport the bluefish to the bait cage. On top of that you need to find the time to do all of this.
Last year we tried our best to make this happen, however we realized just how difficult it was going to be. We found ourselves driving and boating all over creation, looking for bluefish, and then figuring out a way to keep them alive for a few days after we caught them.
We resorted to some very makeshift and inefficient means of doing this. On numerous occasions we hung laundry baskets full of blues at marinas and boat ramps, sneaking around under the cover of darkness so nobody would give us a hard time or find our bait supply. I also remember keeping a half dozen bluefish alive in a 55 gallon drum in the bed of the truck for three days. I ran extension cords from the house out to aerators pumping oxygen into the water. Of course every day I found myself at the boat ramp, dumping old "poopy" water and filling up with fresh stuff.
Of course on most days we found ourselves completely bait-less, heading out onto the Bay with nothing in the bait tank. On these trips we'd travel miles in search of bluefish. I find it comical that bluefish always seem to be everywhere when you are striped bass fishing, and then nowhere at all when you need them for bait. Real convenient!
We needed to do something different for this season. I'm happy to say that so far, so good on the bait front.
After some good networking, we secured an awesome spot at a local marina where we can keep our bait cage. I expect this to axe hours of running around time, and give us the potential to procure a consistent, reliable source of live bluefish. This way we sleep soundly the night before the trip, knowing we will have live bait in the morning. Nothing's better than heading out onto the Bay with a livewell full of fresh baits.
We got the pen in the water two days ago, and after making some adjustments last night, the pen rises and drops quite nicely with the tide. My tuna fishing buddy Jason Mazzola constructed the pen last spring, out of steel mesh and a few "noodles" that help keep it buoyant. I may do a piece on how to construct a bait pen for short money in a future post.
The next hurdle we had to jump was figuring out a way to access the bait pen at low tide. For this we came up with the idea of constructing a rope ladder. I'm happy to say that our homemade rope ladder was easy to make, cost next to nothing, and so far has worked pretty well.
I used the ladder yesterday, it stretched a fair amount, but I didn't end up swimming in the marina which was quite the relief!
Of course the next step is filling the bait pen with bluefish. So far so good on this front as well. Yesterday afternoon we shot down to one of our bluefish hot spots down Cape. The snappers were in thick and we quickly boated around a dozen of them. Unfortunately most of the snappers were on the small side (less than 8 inches) so I'm not sure how well they will perform as giant tuna bait.
However we did hook up with a giant tuna last fall fishing an 8 inch snapper beneath a balloon off the east end of the Cape Cod Canal, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
Another benefit of good networking is getting tips as to where bluefish are, and access to otherwise un-accessible areas around the Cape. I met Bob P. last year when he came out on a striped bass charter on the Miss Loretta. We boated bass up to 46 pounds, which is always a good way to break the ice. Well after some chit chat Bob mentioned that he had a great bluefish spot, a private dock, and a skiff. The stars have aligned!
So yesterday, after catching a bunch of snappers, we took Bob's skiff out before sunset in hopes of catching some 15-20 inch bluefish. After some searching we managed to nab one beautiful 16 inch bluefish on a popper. Nice!
So after all that, we have around a dozen snappers and one perfect, juvenile bluefish swimming in our pen under a dock at a marina. It's great knowing that we have at least some bait ready for that next weather window.
It's also great knowing that we are starting to develop a reliable system for catching and storing bait, which was a huge challenge last year. I'm headed up to Boston tonight to spend my birthday (yep 26 years old!) with the girlfriend. Mazzola is headed down Cape after work in hopes of cast netting pogies after receiving a pogie tip this afternoon. Again, good networking has gotten him inside pogie info, and access to a different skiff at a different dock somewhere near Hyannis!
Things are off to a great start! Good luck giant tuna fishing!
Tight lines,
Captain Ryan
