Star Island Shark Tournament Video

Here's the film debut of the Small Fortune from last month's Star Island Shark Tournament.  No winning fish this year but we're crossing our fingers for an Oscar.  Enjoy!

Jumping Ship for Bigeye

Captain Steve jumped ship to the Ambrosia May last week on an overnight to the Fishtails Canyon.   They hauled in 10 albacore at 40lbs a piece and 2 bigeye, one of which weighed 240lbs dressed.

It was a beautiful full moon when Steve hooked the bigeye on the chunk and after 2.5 hours, with everyone pitching, in they brought him in.  

The fish fed an army at the Small house the other night.  We had tuna poke, tuna tartare, sashimi, nigiri, and marinated tuna steaks.  Looking forward to a couple more trips this season!

2012 Star Island Shark Tournament

This article below may be appearing in the PYC newsletter, so I am printing it here as well.  I need some pictures from the crew members, so send them over!

On Thursday evening, June 14th, the Small Fortune sailed from Pequonnock Yacht Club in New Haven towards Montauk, NY to participate in the 26th Annual Star Island Shark Tournament. The Shark Tournament at Star Island is one of the biggest shark tournaments in the world, with prize purses regularly topping a half of a million dollars. This year’s tournament is the seventh in a row in which the Small Fortune has participated. With Capt. Steve Small at the helm, and a mixed crew of veteran angler/deckhands and newbies, we were greeted with beautiful weather to cross Long Island Sound, through Plum Gut and on towards Lake Montauk. When we arrived, we joined the gathering of 156 boats and approximately 1,000 anglers, all dreaming of the prize Mako or Thresher Shark that would bring glory, an impressive trophy, and a lot of cold, hard cash.

The format of the 2-day tournament is a shotgun 6am start, fish wherever you’d like, and be back at the docks by 6pm on Friday for day 1, and 5pm on Saturday for day 2. On Friday (day 1), the Small Fortune decided to head straight to the grounds where we landed last year’s 2nd Prize Mako Shark. The location, above an underground hump rising from about 180 ft of water, was approximately an hour and a half ride from the Marina. When we arrived, we loaded the first block of frozen Menhaden chum into the chum bucket and started a power slick. This is a technique used to start the scent trail leading up to the boat whereby we slowly bump along for a few minutes with chum being released into the water. Once satisfied with the power slick, we kill the engines and start our drift. We position baits consisting of Bluefish, Menhaden, and Mackerel at various depths to cover the water column, all the while continuing to expand on our chum slick in order to attract sharks from miles around.

It only took about 45 minutes to have the first shark take a bait, starting the action for the day that would prove NON-STOP. The first shark was a Blue Shark of about 100-125 lbs. Blue Sharks are abundant in the waters surrounding Montauk, and while fun to catch, are typically not big enough to win significant money, and its meat carries very little table value compared to the tasty Mako and Thresher Sharks. All Blue Sharks that are caught aboard the Small Fortune are released. The only instance where one would be brought to the docks would be if it qualified for the tournament. The minimum weight for a Blue Shark to qualify is 225 lbs. This equates to a shark longer than 10 feet in length. During day 1, we lost count of the number of Blue Sharks we caught, but the number was certainly above 20. We went back to the docks with tired arms due to each of us catching several sharks up to 200 lbs, but we didn’t have shark to weigh in front of the large crowd of spectators back at Star Island. The day was fantastic however, with several anglers catching their largest fish of their lives, and other exciting moments like when a school of porpoises came to take a bite of the Mackerel we had on hand.

Day 2, we decided to try a different location, further east than we’ve typically fished for sharks in the past. Almost immediately, we were greeted by the Blue Sharks once again. Being amongst several Blue Sharks is a common curse for Montauk shark fisherman, but is a blessing for anglers not concerned with high money tournament entry fees. Within one hour’s ride from Montauk, we again caught double digit numbers of sharks. This fishery is extremely reliable and poses a great opportunity for anglers that have never tangled with a fish larger than Long Island Sound’s Bluefish and Striped Bass. Strapping into a 200 lb Blue Shark is almost a guarantee, proven by the fact that the Small Fortune has never gone sharking without catching Blue Sharks. But, alas, the second day of the tournament passed us by and we had no prize winner come to the boat this year.

One year after catching a prize winning Mako Shark, the Small Fortune finished the tournament with nothing but Blue Shark releases. The Thresher Shark still eludes our 55’ Ocean, but there is always next year. The final results of the tournament included a 422 lb Thresher Shark, a 344 lb Mako Shark, and a surprise qualifying 237 lb Blue Shark (which represented the first qualifying Blue Shark to be weighed in several years). In total, there were 47 fish weighed in this year, many of which provided shark meat for local charities. While we didn’t come home with a trophy or any cold, hard cash, we still had our Small Fortune.

Canyon Trip - October 9-10, 2011

We took another trip to the canyons with forecasts of flat seas and warm water. The crew included Steve, myself, Andrew, Brian, Gary, and Dave.

We started off heading for little-fishtails where we saw satellite shots of warm water eddies pushing up into the flats. Unfortunately, there weren't any fish to be found. We picked up and headed south east towards the edge to see what we could find. What we found was mahi only. Tuna were eluding us.

We picked up once more and continued to head east towards West Atlantis. When we got there, we picked up more mahi and set up for the chunk. On the chunk, the story remained, mahi mahi mahi mahi. We did have one interesting run on our sword line, only for a knot to fail.
In the morning, we put out our spread at first light and within the first 15 minutes we had a triple header of yellowfin tuna. FINALLY! We circled back around to try to find them again but then they were gone. At one point, we trolled through a school of porpoises that were feeding on a bait ball that seemed to be an acre or 2 in size. Somehow, either there weren't tuna around or they weren't interested in our spread.
So by the end of it, the three yellowfin were all we got. On top of that we kept 13 mahi and threw probably 10 of them back. Everyone took meat home, but it wasn't the best tuna haul ever by any stretch of the imagination.

That probably wraps up the canyon season for us. Until the spring...

Canyon Trip - September 10-11, 2011

The Small Fortune left Saturday 4:30am from Milford with full tanks and a skeleton crew of Steve, Andrew, Artem, and me. We stopped off in Montauk for bait, ice and tackle. Ride out to Fish Tails canyon was sunny with 2 foot seas and calm swells. Absolutely beautiful while turning the corner around Montauk Point.

Total trip took 7 hrs from Milford to Fish Tails. We trolled the Tails and found not much. No tuna but lots of small Mahi stacked up under the pots. As we went passed one pot, literally about fifteen 2-3 lb mahi were jumping out of the water at high speeds towards our spread. It was as if they were mammal dolphin, the way they were breaching. They were all quite small though, I think they knocked every lure out of the clips with their aggression, but we only caught one that time.

Reports were of warm water 10 miles south of the Tails so we went there and picked up 2 albacore.

The infamous "death rattle"

Set up there for the chunk around 8pm drifting in 2700 feet of water but it got rough. Perhaps the coolest thing that happened while on the chunk was that just after dark, we saw this MASSIVE thing moving slowly at the edge of our underwater lights. Eventually it came within 10 feet of the transom and it turned out to be a giant mola mola (google it if you don't know). A very cool site and a first for me. We had few hits on the chunk and at one point I hooked into something big. Real big. It made 3 huge runs but it spit the hook after about 1/2 hour of fighting. I barely got a foot of line back from it the whole time. I had it on a 30W, so I'm suspecting it was either a big eye tuna, a very large yellowfin, or a swordfish. We had recently seen a shark, but we ruled that out when the hook came back clean with no teeth abrasions on the line whatsoever. Also, the head shakes and runs were not typical of sharks. Anyway, you always lose the big one, so no story there. Here's me locked into the mystery fish.

We had a few more hits, Andrew landed another Mahi, but we were drifting at a fast pace and getting slammed by swells. Deciding that we could not drift and fish, we came off the drift around midnight and all we could do was drive slowly west (with the waves) to the Dip. We put a couple lines out to see if anything would hit a lure trolled at night, but nothing happened. We ended up at the Dip by the time it started to get light. Then we turned around at daylight and started trolling back to where we started and we were immediately on the fish.

We fought fish all the way back to the to the tails in 6-8 plus head seas. Constant action for 3 hours. Since it was rough, we only had 5 or six lines out at a time, and each time we hit the fish, almost all lines went down. But for whatever reason, usually only 2 or 3 of them would actually hold a fish after the strike and there were plenty of skipjacks mixed in with the Albacore.

Finished fishing at 10am. We still managed full speed all the way to Montauk despite the rough seas. Total was 9 albacore to 55 lbs and 4 mahi. Also threw back probably 10 skipjacks and a few small mahi. Here's Andy, Artem & Steve with the two biggest:

2011 Star Island Shark Tournament

Details to follow...

2010 Star Island Shark Tournament

The Small Fortune fished the 2010 Star Island Shark tournament this past weekend. With beautiful weather, full coolers, plenty of bait and chum, and lots of good guys on the boat, the only thing that was missing all weekend was a tournament winning worthy shark. We fought and released dozens of blue sharks, but none big enough to land and weigh in and no exotic sharks to take down the big prize.

The winning shark ended up being an impressive 335 lb thresher. Full tournament results were:

Heaviest overall - AFISHIONADO - 335 lbs. thresher
1st place mako - CAROL LIBBY - 241 lbs
2nd place mako - PANCHO - 236 lbs
3rd place mako - CHANGE ORDER -224 lbs
1st place other species - AFISHIONADO - 335 lbs. thresher
2nd place other species - HALFWAY THERE - 330 lbs thresher
3rd place other species - WE GO - 325 lbs thresher

No qualifying blue sharks were weighed in this year. All the ones we caught were skinny skinny skinny. They say that an 8.5 foot blue weighs 250 (the minimum for the tourney) but this year they were still too light even at that length. Also, folks, make sure you know the difference in the shark species that you may encounter in our waters. One boat killed a great white shark and brought it in to the weigh station, only to be greeted by the authorities shortly thereafter. I'm not sure what happened, but I've heard the fine was $25,000. Not only will it hurt your wallet, but the restrictions on certain sharks are in place for a reason (we hope). There's no excuse for killing a protected species due to ignorance.

Anyway, it was a great weekend. The boat is running pure. The new underwater lights look fantastic at night, can't wait to break them in on an overnighter tuna trip. Shouldn't be long now... Below are some pics.

















And in unfortunate news, due to moving to the left coast, David has been suspended from Team Small Fortune until further notice. The case is being reviewed, strict penalties are pending...

'10 Season has begun!

Small Fortune went into the water last week and we've already got a day of striper fishing under our belts. Here are some pictures of her going into the water. Notice the beautiful blue bottom. The last month and a half or so we've been busy completely stripping the many old layers of paint off her, sanding it down, and then putting on a sleek new fresh layer. You could have gotten lost in the enormous pock marks and craters that were carved into the old paint but now its going to be nothing but smooth cruising out to the canyons!

We decided not to soda blast the boat and instead went for a slower but more thorough method. We used Aircraft Fiberglass Stripper and a lot of elbow grease to get the paint off. Many thanks to our tireless crew, especially Dean for his relentless attack on the bottom. (Side note: If you're into playing the stocks and seen an uncharacteristic rise in Aircrafts stocks over the last two months and decided to get in on it, I would suggest selling now. Without the support of Small Fortune, things may take a turn for the worse!)

Small Fortune getting ready to go in the water

Notice that nice new paint job! Oh, and how about those brand new underwater lights! We already have seen lots of bait fish chased by giant stripers right in the harbor. I can't wait to see the squid and tuna in them!

Goin' in!

Now a call to arms for the father's day shark tournament out of Star Island. If you're in, shoot us an email at ssmall@smallctlaw.com

See you on the water!

Trip to West Atlantis 8/15/09-8/16/09

Better late than never. The following was posted on ctfisherman.com which we recently joined to share offshore information with fellow enthusiasts.

Called Jeff Woerz for a spot on his boat Thursday at 11:oopm. He said the boat was down but that he could put together a few guys for a trip on my 55' Ocean. Left Sat 6:00 am, topped off in Montauk and started our troll about 14 miles from the wall. Struck out on the troll and went to 1500-3000 feet for the chunk. Decided to drift because it was so still out there.
Things started heating up in the early morning. With tuna in the slick and makos circling we got a very large albie. We then hooked a large Mako but didn't set the hook. After a few jumps he was free. We then hooked a bigeye who had all but spooled the 50w when we were able to gain some ground by backing down. He then outsmarted us by going straight down where he spooled us. Back on the troll in the early am we hooked two large Mahi heading back toward the edge. We finished off the morning with a White Marlin who managed to dehook himself after a few jumps. All in all it was a great trip where we were schooled by the fish. The weather was incredible, the boat ran like a charm and everyone had a great time. A special thankyou to Jeff for sharing his extensive fishing knowledge and Aldo,David,David, Rich and Adrian.

Dave with his Mahi.

Two giant bulls in the box.

Adrian with a large alby.

Rich driving home after his first offshore trip. Look how straight that wake is.

Canyon Report 7-18/7-19

The Small Fortune took a late-planned canyon trip this weekend after hearing of good yellowfin catches at Block Canyon (Fish Tails). We sailed out of Port Milford at 5:30am on Saturday, with Capt Steve, Andrew, Patrick, Glenn, and me aboard. After a detour to fix an oil filter in West Haven, we took off to Montauk to get bait/ice/fuel.

The weather was beautiful, but the seas were a bit rough when we got around the point. It was, hmm, let's call it a fishable 6-8 foot sea. All I know is that we didn't cruise out there at full speed, so you know it was a bit sporty when the 55' Small Fortune has to slow down. Absolutely safe and fishable, that's all that mattered. We started trolling north of the canyon and got a strike IMMEDIATELY after putting the second line out. Unfortunately, it was just a skipjack tuna (which were EVERYWHERE). For those that don't know, skippies do not have any business being near a dinner plate. We released double digit amounts of these little tuna, and kept a few for bait.

There wasn't much but skippies for a while, but Glenn took the wheel and buzzed us past a lobster pot buoy and we hooked up with a real nice bull mahi on the green machine spreader bar. Andrew reeled it in like a pro:



Eventually we caught what we were looking for, a yellowfin tuna on the same green machine spreader bar. This first yellowfin was short of the 27" legal limit, so it became the first yellowfin I've ever had to throw back. Shortly after, we did get a keeper yellowfin on the boat's secret weapon lure, a purple bird daisy chain with a purple jet head hook bait. So now we had a nice mahi and a yellowfin in the box.

Once the sun set, we set up for the night chunk. It was still pretty rough out there (weather man was a little premature on his "wind will die down at night" prediction. In reality, it didn't die down until sunday morning). The tuna weren't around, and this was the first time that we didn't see massive amounts of squid and baitfish in and around our hydroglow light. We figured we were in a tuna-less area but it was too dark and rough to move spots. So we put out the shark chum to see what we could find.

Not twenty minutes after setting out the chum, we had a tournament quality mako show up. Glenn quickly fileted one of the skipjacks we kept for bait and fed the shark. This thing took it immediately and the fight was on. Andrew got on the rod and fought it hard for about 30 minutes. This fish was fast and was very interested in getting wrapped up in the boat and gear. Under normal sharking circumstances, we'd be able to maneuver the boat to fight the fish better, but being that it was rough and after midnight, we didn't like the risk involved with coming off the anchor and chasing the fish. So you can see where this is going, we ended up losing the fish after 30 minutes when it ran under the boat and snapped the line. We estimate the fish to be about 250 lbs, and it is also officially a caught fish, as we touched the leader before losing it. No shark steaks, but it was an amazing scene.

The rest of the night chunk was pretty much uneventful. On the morning troll, we picked up four more yellowfin, with two being keepers and one of those keepers being a nice 35 pounder that Patrick reeled in. Patrick's fish took a blue/white jr ilander with a ballyhoo. His first keeper yellowfin:



Final Tally: 6 yellowfin (3 keepers), 1 Mahi, countless skipjacks, and a 'released' Mako. A nice trip for this early in the season, we all took home several bags of fresh fish. I have some videos of a pod of dolphin swimming/jumping with the boat, as well as an expletive filled clip of Andrew's reaction to losing the mako. I have a call into the FCC to see if it can be posted. Stay tuned for videos, here are a few more pics (click any picture for a larger image):

Spring is here

Well, spring is upon us and thoughts of tuna are running through our minds. It won't be long now. Capt. Steve and company took time out this past weekend to attend a Canyon Runner Seminar and hopefully they came away with a bunch of secret weapons and strategies. Keith has come through with a few pictures from one of our October trips from the fall. Some nice sunrise shots and one from the filet table. Thanks Keith!











It won't be long now. Save your money!

Cold Weather Fishing Report

I just recently went down to Maryland to fish the Fall MSSA Striper Tournament. We had some seriously rough weather, but managed seven nice stripers. No money in the tournament, unfortunately, as there were some 50 lb cows taken. Our best was 32 lbs.





As we wait for tuna season to come around next year, stay tuned to the blog for some of our favorite fish recipes, other random fishing reports, etc... Maybe Steve will fill us in with all the sweet upgrades he'll be making to the Small Fortune, right? How about outrigger mounted and underwater video cameras?? I'm sure our financial backers will support that!

Hope all is well

Pictures Galore

Here is a link to the latest run out to the canyons

Tuna October '08


The Yellowfin is delicious. After a week of sushi and steaks I am still excited about the other two bags of loins in my dorm room fridge.

Until next time...

Pictures from Atlantis

Here are a few choice shots from last weekends trip.

Photo by Sam- Johnny and Steve at sunrise on the way out to Montauk from Milford.

Photo by Sam: Penn and Mike

Photo by Dave: Penn and sunset

Photo by Dave: Sam on an early morning Yellowfin

Photo by Sam: Jeremy confindently driving back to Milford

Fishing Report 10/11 - 10/12

The Small Fortune sailed again this weekend with a crew of 8. As always we had Captain Steve at the helm. David was there as well, with his Middlebury friends Slibby Sam, Johnny (aka "pole sitter", aka "whooping crane"), and Jeremy (aka "I can drive with a girl around each arm"). Andrew (aka "Hard Hose") and Tony (aka the "One Armed Bandit") were also along for the trip.

This weekend we decided to take a longer run than we normally do and we headed to the Atlantis Canyon, as opposed to Block Canyon (Fish Tails). There were better reports and good temperature readings out there, so we figured we'd give it a shot. We started trolling around 2:30 pm on Saturday and only had one knockdown, no hookups.

We settled in for the night chunk on the canyon wall and quickly had a fish take a chunk only to lose it a minute later. Then we had a double header shortly after that, landing a nice albacore and losing a nice yellowfin. Here's a pic of Johnny's albacore:

I'm embarrased to say that both lost fish were my fault. I'll mention it here so no one else makes this mistake. When crimping our chunk lines to the swivel, I used crimps designed for 150lb test when we were using 80 lb test. Now when you crimp the line, it looks so unbelievably tight that you would never imagine the line pulling out. Well people say that tuna can find any and every weakness that you have in your tackle. If you give them the chance, they will get away. And they did twice. I'm still kicking myself over it! So don't let it happen to you.

The night time chunk is an incredible experience. We use HydroGlow fluorescent lights in the water to light up the area all around the boat. This attracts schools of squid and baitfish to the boat, with the idea that where there is bait, the tuna will show up. It's hard to get a feeling of what this is like when you are way out in the middle of the ocean. I was able to take a picture and brighten it to show the light and some squid swimming around it. It truly is like watching the Discovery Channel live in person.


Back to the report. Late in the night, Andrew was able to catch a real nice Mahi on a chunk. In the morning, we got back up on the troll and found a great weed mat. We were able to pick up two more mahi and a nice yellowfin. We worked a temperature break where the water temp went from 60 degrees to 70 degrees in the matter of a few hundred feet. Normally these types of breaks are chock loaded with tuna. Unfortunately it wasn't the case this time. Here's Sam's yellowfin:


David and Sam were taking pictures like crazed papparazi lunatics, so I'm sure there will be a follow up post with a lot more shots. It was a short and slow tuna season this year, after a spectacular one last year. Hopefully they just took a year off and we will hit them hard next year.