The offshore fishing is rolling right along as the canyons continue to produce and bluefin fishing improves inshore.
Bluefin
The Bluefin Bite is looking good off Chatham, MA, but elsewhere things are a bit tough.
Captain Gene Quigley of Shore Catch Guide Service, fishing off Northern New Jersey reports that it’s still mainly a trolling bite, as the fish are on squid. It’s still early, Gene reminded me, and there’s plenty of time for a good jig bite to develop. Gene says the fish have been running a bit small lately as well.
Captain Ed Berger, who does the OTW New Jersey Forecast reports that some sand eels are showing up and the bite is improving:
A bite on small and medium-sized bluefin has developed nicely with sand eels showing up at the usual locations, as you will read in our network reports below. Trolling is still effective, but being prepared to switch over to a more directed approach when you find the bait and the fish is now mandatory. As you start chunking, you really have to be prepared to drop down in line class for your leaders as the fish have been finicky.
There is real good news and real bad news out at the Glory Hole. The real good is that the jig bite for medium-sized bluefin is underway. The bad news is that the big bluefish have invaded the same zone. It can be pretty frustrating dropping a $20 tuna jig into the mouth of a 12-pound chopper. Some bigger bluefin are reported to be working further offshore in the Texas Tower/Bacardi/Triple Wreck zones.
Stellwagen Bank off Massachusetts is still quiet when it comes to bluefin tuna fishing, but the waters east of Chatham and South of the Vineyard are doing very well. Multiple hook-up days aren’t uncommon on Crab Ledge lately. Coop at Coop’s Bait and Tackle on Martha’s Vineyard heard of a boat catching three tuna in the 50 and 60-pound range out there this week. Eric Stewart at the Hook Up in Orleans, MA has been doing a job on the tuna as well. As of this writing, Eric had landed three tuna out of four that struck his spreader bars Thursday morning. The tuna bite slowed a bit with the bright full moon and big tides on Monday, but the bite is back on in a big way. Tuna up to 70 inches have been taken on the troll.
Canyons
Chris at Harry’s Army Navy in Robbinsville is all about the yellowfin bite out at Lindenkohl Canyon. The reports are of much bigger fish than were running the last couple of weeks in the Spencer and south, although the bite count is way, way down.
There have been some scattered reports of yellowfin at the Hudson. Not the same, blitz-like bite that was going off in the Southern Canyons, but a nice class of fish.
Bigeye tuna have showed up in some of the canyons. One of the Canyon Runner boats out of New Jersey had a wolfpack attack the spread earlier this week, resulting in a trio of 200-pound bigeye.
Sharks
There wasn’t much news on the shark fishing front, at least in terms of makos and threshers. Blue sharks are abundant off Block Island and south of Martha’s Vineyard and are providing reliable action. Some big sharks were brought into Montauk last weekend, the topper being a 448-pound thresher shark.