The Small Fortune sailed to Block Canyon (Fish Tails) for an overnight trip, leaving Montauk at daybreak on Saturday 10/4. On the trip were Captain Steve, Jeff, Graham, Keith, and myself. We started trolling in the flats north of the Tails at about 10 am or so. Took a while, but we eventually broke the skunk with a mahi after a few hours. The action was slow for most of the day, with a mahi here or there until the late afternoon. All of a sudden lines started going off like crazy. We were excited to be in the fish, but unfortunately they were the wrong kind. Lots of False Albacore, which have absolutely no table value whatsoever. They are an aggressive fish though, as they were peeling line off 80w reels that were pulling large spreader bars. Exciting stuff, but not what we were looking for.
As we set up for the night time chunk, we had two diamond jigs off of the outriggers, letting the waves do the jigging for us. Right off the bat, we had one clip release and the line came tight. Finally we felt that pull we were waiting for and in no time we had a gaff in the first tuna of the trip, a nice 35 pound longfin albacore. We tangled with a few mahi during the night. Keith was working a chunk line when something pulled tight. It took a jump by the boat, but this was no mahi. It ended up being a small mako. It eventually chewed through the 80 lb fluorocarbon leader, which was fine because it was only 40 pounds or so, which is too small to keep if you're talking makos. Still a very cool sight to see a shark jump out of the water.
After that, we were put into shark mania. We were harrassed by blue sharks all night. They were cutting every line that we had out. At one point, Steve and I were fighting fish at the same time, only to realize that the same blue shark took both of our lines! Then we figured that since we had sharks in the area, we might as well make the most of it and let Keith tangle with a biggun' on his first trip to the canyons. We used a big fat filet from one of the few falsies that we kept earlier in the day. It literally took 20 seconds to have a blue dog inhale that bait. Keith fought that guy for a while, probably about 200 pounds. Nice blue shark. They were all around, and they were so thick that we had to stop chunking for a while to try to get them to leave.
As the night wore on and we ran out of chunks, we decided to just leave the deck with our 2 diamond jigs jigging away and our deep drop swordfish line out (which didn't get a nibble all night at any depth!). Just as Graham and I were going to sneak inside for a snooze, one of the diamond jigs went SCREAMING!!!! I had just taken my shoes off, but I saw this line peeling away, so I jumped to it in my socks and grabbed hold. Whatever this thing was, it meant business. After trying to pass the fight to Graham or Steve with no takers, I had them put the belt and harness on me to go to work. We were thinking that this had to be the big yellowfin we were waiting for. After a good long fight, I pulled up the biggest blue shark that I've ever caught. Really big and impressive shark, over 300 pounds (if I'm the one telling the story), just not what we were hoping for.
In the morning we started trolling before day break. After about 3 hours of no takers, we called it a trip and headed back to Montauk. At the dock, we talked to another boat that just got back. We asked them how they did and they said, "A bunch of mahi, one albacore, and we were harrassed by sharks all night." Sounds familiar!
Weather was great, good company, and we all had fish to take home with us. So the trip was a success. It was too bad we couldn't find more tuna, but it looks like the one we got was better than some people did. Come on you tuna!!!
- Michael
