Throughout most of this offshore season, all the best reports were coming from Cape Cod with spotty fishing elsewhere. This week flipped the switch on the New Jersey and New York Bight tuna grounds. There’s been an insane bluefin bite, a solid run of bigeye, and a mix of yellowfin, longfin and mahi as well.
From Captain Ed Berger’s South Jersey Report:
“There is an EPIC bluefin tuna bite going on in the southern tuna grounds that is just simply off the hook. If cameras still used film (for those of you in your 20’s, film is something we used to take pictures of the Flintstones with), Kodak stock would be through the roof (Kodak?)! On the troll, on the jig, on the chunk.
On almost a daily basis the bite has moved around from the Hot Dog to Masseys to the 19 Fathom lump, but the entire body of water down there is simply teeming with life. Whales, huge mats of bait on the surface, and tuna chicks hovering so densely that they actually look like surface bait from a distance. Under the telltale signs, beautiful bluefin in decent numbers and decent size. I’ll take a guess-timate that they average right around the over/under size which put’s them around 70 pounds although fish in the low 100s have been collared as well. Add to the mix in the almost 80 degree water, some small yellowfin, an occasional wahoo, and on our trip yesterday a mako that fought the good fight for 45 minutes and won that would have clocked in at somewhere over 300 pounds. Lost less than 30 yards from the boat, this dinosaur cleared the water for a triple flip almost 250 yards away on hookup. After wrecking our spread it finally chewed through the leader while making a straight line dash towards the boat that pushed up a wall of water close to a foot high.
The southern canyons are holding bigeye, and they are eating too. The overnight yellowfin bite in the Washington has had some very seasoned charter skippers saying they were on their way home from their best overnight trips ever… these guys do not use that term lightly.”
From the Canyon Club Resort and Marina in Cape May:
“TUNA TIME!
Wednesday has turned out to be tunaday as 3 boats came in and weighed 5 bigeye tuna over 200 pounds and also a 111-pound swordfish.
The guys on the Tarheel fishing on their 31 Ocean Master came to the dock with the swordfish and a bigeye over 220 pounds. Capt Mark on the 60-foot Canyon Runner weighed in a bigeye of 263 pounds. Capt Dean on the 48-foot Canyon Runner weighed in this morning with not only a 230 pounder bigeye, but also a whopping 307 pounder! What a great job by all three crews.”
The northern canyons are producing as well. Boats from Connecticut to Cape Cod found good fishing off the edge this week.
The recent trip report from J and B Tackle Co in Niantic, CT:
“Twelve yellowfin and twenty mahi. Yellowfin ranged from 20 to 80 pounds. Mahi averaged 10 to 15 pounds. All caught on the troll in the Dip on Wednesday and in the Tails Thursday morning.”
Boats fishing the warm water south of Veatch Canyon found big mahi and longfin albacore.
While there are still bluefin being caught daily in the waters east of Chatham, overall it’s pretty slow. The fish being caught are large, almost all being 70 inches or better, but calm conditions have made catching them difficult. Captain Eric Stewart expects some more smaller fish to move into Cape waters after the full moon.
There’s a big buzz about shark fishing this week as the Martha’s Vineyard Monster Shark Tournament starts on Friday. Based on some of the week’s weigh ins from the waters south of the Vineyard, this should be an interesting tournament. Several threshers, including a 400-plus-pounder were bested this week.