July 18th 2020
We left out of Moriches Inlet and returned back through Fire Island Inlet. Grab a cup of coffee, there was a lot of action in between to tell you about.
We decided to sleep in and leave at 6am. They predicted it would be 3 footers at 5 seconds so I decided on getting a little later start. The second I poked my head out of the house in the morning I know the fog monster would get us. Sure enough we clear the canal and we are headed right into a wall of fog. From the breach all the way to Moriches Inlet it was pea soup. I was really hoping that it was more of a land fog than a water fog. My hopes were dashed as we headed south. The fog was so thick my hat actually had water dripping off it. My fingers looked like prunes. About 5 miles north of the Coimbra the fog lifted. I ran about 5 miles south of the wreck and dropped the lines in. 20 minutes later we were already on the move again. I didn't get a good fish vibe for us to stay so we headed towards the Bacardi. Halfway there we could see it coming. Another wall of fog just swallowed us up. At this point the morale is very low. No fish, not being able to see and once again being soaked will weigh on the most positive of people. We get a little pick me up in the form of a small bluefin. We toss him back. Ok we are on the board! Then as if we got rewarded for throwing the little guy back, the fog lifted once again. Another half hour of trolling produced nothing. We were only 17 miles from the tip of the Hudson so I decided to run there and drop in. On the way Brian spots fish on top. They weren't feeding. They were just swimming around on the surface. We quickly stopped and tried to pop and jig. They didn't want anything to do with us. Knowing that fish were around we dropped in and started to troll. I turn the boat around and can see in the distance there is a crazy feed going on. As we approach it's real tight. I can't go through the middle because of all the whales. I troll the perimeter to no avail. I decide to leave the feed and head back towards where we spotted those fish on the top. Halfway there we get tight. Chris is on the rod and ten minutes later our first 2020 yellowfin tuna hits the deck. If you are on my boat you know the words that instantly come out of my mouth when a fish comes over the rail. "Let's go, put them out." If we got one to bite we can get others to bite. 10 minutes later we get tripled up. One pops off, another gets sharked so my hope of landing another tuna is now on the shoulders of 13 year old Sean. The kid's a machine. He just keeps cranking. There was no way he was going to give up. The smile on his face when that fish hit the deck was priceless. We would later weigh the fish and there was that big grin again when I told him he now owns the boat record (not a world record. I keep records of largest fish caught on our boats) for yellowfin tuna. With the fog gone and the afternoon sun above us we are now drenched from sweat. We are about to sweat a whole lot more. As we approached another school of yellows I had a feeling it was going to happen. He comes the wolf pack. One on , make that two, make that three, make that four, make that five. My crew is going crazy. As we did our best to land these fish I learned a valuable lesson. I put the boat into forward neutral (the slowest the boat will go). There were two lines out that didn't have tuna on them. They both had ballyhoo. Sure enough those rods go off. All seven rods have fish on them. It turns out that sharks ate those ballyhoos. Lessen learned...get those ballyhoo lines in if sharks are around. We got 2 fish to the boat but it cost us. I lost 2 wide-trackers and a Joe Shute. After all the lines got untangled I think my crew was going to through me over board when I shouted..get them out. At this point sweat was pouring off all of our faces. We easily went through 40 bottles of water between us. If that wasn't crazy enough we hooked up again. We were tripled up again. This time you could see the sharks explode on the tuna right in the surface. Out of the 3 we managed to put another one on ice. I raised the white flag and informed the crew we were heading home. All of this insanity took place in just 3 hours. The big change that I made once I knew they were yellowfin was changing out most of my purple lures for bright color ones. Sean caught the big fish of the day on a Sterling Tackle pink daisy chain. The sharks loved the Joe Shutes w/ballyhoo and the tuna loved all things Sterling Tackle. All fish were caught on Blue Action Tackle top shots. I will actually need to change a few out with all those toothy critters and tangles. I'm sure Chris, Brian and Sean will never forget this adventure. I know I won't!
The first and the third screen shot shows a massive amount of YFT under our boat. The second screen shot shows a whale under us.
