We ran within 20 miles of the Washington Canyon where we had intended to spend the night but found the wind howling out of the NE up to 15-20 knots so we decided turn the boat to the north run up to the Baltimore. The recent reports from the Washington were better than our local canyons for tuna and we had some of our best trips of the entire offshore season down there and that is why we opted to make the long run south but it was not to be, so we ended up in the Baltimore which my latest chlorophyll and sea temp shots showed some good water just to the south of the canyon and out to 500 fathoms. When we got there we found the conditions nothing like the latest Satellite shots I had gotten on Saturday even out to 500 fathoms as the canyon was covered with had cold green water (69-70 degrees)with little or no life in it overall. There were no whales anywhere and actually thought about running up to the Wilmington but the radio reports I got from up there seemed to indicate there was more bait along with a few tuna but nothing great overall so we opted to target Big Eyes by trolling into the night but never had one bite on the troll nor did we see any tuna on our fishfinder while trolling. The end result was the tuna fishing was nonexistent in the Baltimore even though we did catch one on the troll (25 lb. Yellowfin) trolling around 70 fathoms but no chunk or jig bites all night and from what the radio said no one else did either. We sword fished but only had a couple of legitimate bites that did not come tight but we did have literally all the sharks you wanted at times during the night even when we did not chunk. It was just one long night for us in the Baltimore and one of the slowest tuna trips of the entire 2015 season.
Looking at the latest sea temp and Chlorophyll shots I would head north up to the Lindy or Toms if I was going today but it is going to be a while before we get back out and our next scheduled charter is October 23-24 if we get some decent weather and I feel the conditions lend themselves to putting a good tuna catch together. We will continue to run offshore if we can until early November if the fish the tuna are around and the weather allows us to get offshore.
Total lack of squid in the Baltimore. Very similar to some of our other recent trips as it is so different from past years in our local canyons when we could not put a squid, sardine or butterfish down without it getting eaten by other squid in a few short minutes. Big question is where has all the squid gone compared to the past in our local southern canyons?
