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...

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.