One of our captain friends was returning from a southern canyon Sunday July 13th and reported they had nonstop action chunking Yellowfins Saturday afternoon and night. This was confirmed by a second boat that was also down Saturday into Sunday.
It was similar to last summer except the tuna are not the 25-35 lb. ones as these were in the 40-80 class. They started chunking in the late afternoon after the Ocean City Maryland tournament boats left but quit chunking and went on the troll for Big Eyes before nightfall. After fighting a Big Eye for a couple of hours before losing the tuna the crew went back on the chunk and the great action continued. Between the two boats they had close to 50 Yellowfins up to 80 lbs. Yellowfins chunking or jigging.
On our overnight trip on Friday, we also fought a Big Eye in the Washington for almost 3 hours with 30 lbs. of drag before pulling the hook. We spent most of the night fighting the Big Eye then going back on the troll at 2:30 am trying for another Big Eye bite rather spending time chunking for Yellowfins but this great Yellowfin bite really started late Saturday afternoon. My crew has caught numerous Big Eyes over 200 lbs. and estimated the one we lost to be in the 275-300 lb. range as we lost he tuna just out of harpoon range.
If you want a legitimate shot at both a boat load of big Yellowfins plus Big Eyes, the 24 or 30 hour overnight trips to the Washington Canyon offer the some of the finest tuna fishing most will ever experience now.
We will be at the dock for the next few days with the nasty weather but are available this coming Thursday-Friday or Friday-Saturday for either an open boat make-up trip for singles and small parties or regular 6 person charter down to the Washington Canyon where this great tuna bite is happening. The weather looks great later this week and these dates are the only ones available for the rest of July as we are fully booked at this time.
Please contact me if anyone is interested in this open boat trip, or booking the boat for a charter.
