173 lb. Big Eye, 17 small Yellowfins, 2 White Marlin releases and all the 80-90 pound Blue Fin Tuna’s you can catch on Jigs last night and today on the 55 Hooked Up II
Flat out one of the most productive offshore trips we have run in the last 25 years is how I would describe the trip. We ran down to the now, “not so secret canyon”, that puts us closer to the Chesapeake Bay than the Delaware Bay …I could be wrong on that, but it is long boat ride from any South Jersey port. Some ask, would I do it again? The answer is in a heartbeat.
We had the Clean Earth group and clients from New Castle, DE out for a 30 hour overnight trip that departed Tuesday morning and returned today. We started the trip trolling in the South Poormans where we had a couple of White Marlin which made for some excitement, but, Big Eyes and Yellowfins were our target on this trip. It took trolling into the dark Tuesday night to get the Big Eye bite. The Big Eye ate a 3 oz Blue-White Joe Shute on 30 class tackle which seems to always happen. They seem to eat the lures on the lightest rig in the spread.
Bottom line we ended up with one 173 lb Big Eye, 17 small Yellowfin, one 85-90 lb Blue Fin Tuna plus the White Marlin action. We decided that we would stop by my most favorite 30 fathom lump on the way home and try for a tuna triple of a Blue Fin Tuna, Big Eye and a Yellowfin all on the same trip. It turned out it happened for us on this trip.
We managed to boat the Big Eye in just over an hour and fifteen minutes fishing with stand up gear, but this resulted in us not being able get our chunking spread out until around11:30 pm as we fought the Big Eye in the dark the whole time. If we had been chunking or jigging the whole night we may have had 30 or more Yellowfins as good as the night bite is right now fishing with jigs, live squid or chunking butters or sardines
We only have a few days booked over the next couple of weeks so we will be running some open boat trips for singles and small parties plus we are available for regular charters for up to 6 anglers!! Contact us to book your charter or get on an open boat trip. Next week we plan on going back to this canyon and will be doing a few open boat trips.
I have been promoting overnight canyon trips for a while now as it not only allows more fishing and running time but overnight trips allows you to be on the tuna grounds when the bite is the best and this certainly holds true for Big Eyes.
Off to bed now as we are going on day trip departing 3:00 am Thursday morning.
