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August 4th, 2019

 

Crazy day. We pushed off at 3:30am and headed into the Patchogue River to get live bait. We had no problem getting tons of peanut bunker. We also had a few weakfish come up in the net that we released.  We broke the inlet only to find a very choppy ocean. I wanted to go to the Dip however the ocean wouldn't allow us. So I set a course to the Tails and off we went. As we got close to the Tails the ocean finally laid down. Very few fish were caught among the boats that were out there. At 2pm we started to pot hop for mahi. We figured we would crush it with all of the live bait. However the ride out was rough and stressed the bait out, causing them to be useless.  We did manage a few fish. I could tell Matthew was bummed out with the way the day was going. So I made the decision to hit the Coimbra on the way home.

 

Our track line put us right into the middle of hundreds of tuna chicks. I actually didn't see the tuna chicks. I pulled back on the throttle because I smelled fish. I'm not lying. You can smell fish when a feed is going on. As I pulled back on the throttle Chris screamed "look at all of these tuna chicks."  We quickly got the spread out. It was a race against time. It was just about 5pm as we began to troll. I just kept looking at the time as we kept zig zagging through the tuna chicks. I was marking fish. It was driving me crazy. What do I do? What do I do? Do we stop trolling and begin to jig and pop? I was racking my brain when we caught a break. The break was in the form of a mahi that caused us to bring in a few rods. It was a small mahi but we needed to clear a few rods so things wouldn't get tangled. I made the decision pull the spread in and start jigging and popping. Chris dropped down a metal jig and Matt dropped down a Sluggo. I grabbed a rod with a popper on it and went to work. I was going to pop until my arms would fall off. I was determined to go home with a tuna. First two casts produced nothing. Then it happened. The fish came completely out of the water as I watched my popper get inhaled. You could only imagine my excitement as I was screaming at the top of my lungs I'M IN! The rest of the crew went to work clearing rods from the gunnel and grabbing the gaffs.

 

As you can see we boated the fish. It was really fat.

 

Up next was Matthew, you can hear my excitement in the video when he hooks up. It wasn't a huge fish but it was his first tuna on a popper.

 

To fiinish the day Chris hooks up with a really big fish. All three of us took several turns fighting the fish. We weren't able to get a photo of it becaause it took all of us to safely release the fish.

 

We were 42 miles from Moriches when I got the boat up on plane. I ran the boat hard and we got back to the inlet just as the sun set. We made it back to the dock just as total darkness took over. That was around 8:45pm.

 

A 17 hour boat ride that the 4 of us will never forget. 

 

I love my Cape Horn, it handled everything I thew at it.

 

 

The fish that Chris and I are holding is the same fish. You are only allowed 1 fish over 47". Knowing that we had to release Chris's  fish I didn't want to drag it on board for a photo and possibly kill it.  So I wanted to make sure Chris had a photo of him holding a fish.