Just back from my annual fall GOM offshore trip. The weather was amazing and though the fish had been a bit scattered Capt. Bill put us on them with a better than average size for the YFT as well as better than typical numbers. Caught them several ways including chunking , butterfly jigging and on top water lures. It's hard to describe what it looks like when a 50 lb+ tuna blasts a top water lure.
Confirmed that Larry Dahlbergs' "Mr. Wiggly" will in fact catch tuna but as suspected doesn't stand up to their abuse very well.
Anyone that really likes a serious fight with a fish should catch a YFT at least once -- they are just a bad @ss fish! Filled in the gaps between the YFT with blackfin tuna. They are some powerful little fish. Capt. Bill also put us on some nice grouper and (not red) snapper during the mid day when the tuna bite was off. Have to say though that when they're in 300' +/- of water it becomes a bit much like work in my view. I'd rather just have a fish burning line off the reel at a scary rate than a slug fest with a pound of lead working against me at depths that take sooooo long to even reach. Anyway - I won't complain when we're eating the fish that produced!
Probably the most interesting part of the trip for me was when in more or less the middle of the night we had schools of squid and flying fish hanging around under the boat in an attempt to evade the predators in the area. I'd never seen live squid in the wild before -- man are those critters fast! Cool to see the food chain in action.
The tally:
Topic: Tuna hunting... (Read 1849 times)