Back To The Edge (Canyon Report 8/12-8/13)

With a cherry forecast for Friday into Saturday last week, a number of boats were making for the edge of the continental shelf. Larry Backman of the Skipjack out of Falmouth Harbor had room for two more, and Andy Nabreski and I snuck out of work a little early on Friday to join him.

No two trips to the canyon are the same, making each trip a new and exciting experience. Last time Andy and I were in the canyons in mid-July, we fished the same day but on separate boats and had very different, but equally successful trips. Andy’s boat, the TunanuT captained by OTW contributor Jon Pilcher, tripled up on bigeye tuna at first light, after focusing their overnight efforts strictly on swordfish. One by one, the bigeye all escaped, with the final one breaking off mere feet out of gaffing range. A steady pick of yellowfin to nearly 50 pounds rounded out the trip for their crew. You can read Andy’s full report of that trip here.

I was aboard the Skipjack, fishing roughly the same waters as Andy. I took the night shift and chunked through two flats of butterfish with very little results until a giant school of small yellowfin blotted out the fish-finder just after 3:30 a.m. We reeled in our chunk baits and got to jigging. Between the 3 of us, we probably tallied 30 yellowfin between 10 and 25 pounds  in a little more than an hour before we made the call to go back on the troll. We had no problem finding more smallish yellowfin dragging bars and ballyhoo, but we struggled to get the bigger ones we hooked into the boat. When we finally had a solid yellowfin within range of the gaff, a blue marlin ate it and took off for the races, going airborne twice before breaking the line.

On August 12, as we left Falmouth Harbor, things were looking promising in Veatch and Atlantis canyons with a mix of hot and cool water making for some interesting temperature gradients. The lines went in just before 4:00 in the afternoon in seas that were a bit more “sporting” than we’d expected. We managed only a few mahi and skipjack before sunset, but spirits remained high. As we reeled in the lines to get ready for an overnight chunk, we were still buzzing about the extremely close encounter we’d had with a sperm whale that chugged along the surface right next to the Skipjack for almost 5 minutes before cutting across the stern and sounding.

As I went to work with the knife on our first flat of butterfish, I had high hopes for a repeat of my last trip to the Canyons, and kept my Fin-Nor Marquesa and Van Staal VSJ-325 jigging setup close at hand to drop to any likely looking marks on the fish-finder. Those marks wouldn’t come, however, and as Andy and I split chunking duty during the graveyard shift in the Skipjack’s cockpit, our only actual catch was a flying fish I netted when it came to investigate the Hydro Glow light. We rigged up the live flying fish on a flatline and quickly had a take, but whatever it was missed the hooks. I did a fair amount of jigging and did come tight briefly, only to have the fish shake the hook on the Stingo PBJ.

With the sun coming up, and Larry and Christian Valle, the fourth member of our crew, awake, we set the spread out once again. Some more chicken dolphin found the hooks and ended up in the fish box. Around 6:00 a.m. The rod in the center rigger went down hard, followed by the rod in the starboard-side long rigger. As I started to clear a rainbow-colored spreader bar from the starboard-side short rigger a fish exploded on the trailer hook, the bar disappeared from view and the reel began to sing. Tripled up!

Larry grabbed a rod and a belt and I did the same. Before Andy could get the rod in the center rigger, however, the fish had come free. Larry and I got to cranking and within minutes a pair of longfin albacore were doing the tuna tail-slap on the deck of the boat. We hurried to get the lines back out because longfin often travel in large packs, and if you can stay on top of them, triple and quadruple knockdowns can become the order of the day.

Unfortunately, finding the fish again wasn’t in the cards. Andy and I gutted and beheaded the fish, took a couple  photos to pass the time and I ducked down below to get a little shut-eye.

I woke up just after 9:00 and we did about another hour of fruitless trolling before bringing the lines in and heading inshore. Larry and Christian said to leave the rods rigged because with the seas laid down and the glass-calm conditions, they fully expected to see some fish on the surface – fish of the billed variety.

After passing through 40 miles of lifeless water, the ocean seemed to sprout fins. Blue sharks, a basking shark and then a sharp, black triangular fin that just broke the surface came into view. “MARLIN! MARLIN! MARLIN!” shouted Christian, “Someone get on the bow and start casting.” Larry pulled back on the throttles and I hooked up a dead ballyhoo on a medium-heavy spinning setup and headed for the bow. Before I could get there, Christian shouted, “He’s right there, just drop it in!”

My eyes found the fish 3 feet below the surface, just 10 feet off our port side. The white marlin was electric, stripes radiating neon blues and purples. I plopped the ballyhoo in his path and he gave it just the slightest look before turning his attention back to a ball of baitfish that was now taking refuge under our hull. At that point, Christian was shouting about a second marlin. I made a couple more casts without success before handing the rod to Andy to see if he might have better luck. Andy took up station at the bow and Larry crawled the boat toward a third finning marlin 50 yards away.

To sum things up, the next hour was chaos. Marlin seemed to surround the boat at times and we had more chances to sight-cast to billfish on one afternoon than one could expect to have in a lifetime of fishing the waters of the Northeast. In the end, our dead ballyhoo did not suit the palate of the dozen or so beautiful billfish that cruised by the Skipjack, though they would show each cast just enough interest to make our hearts skip a beat or three. We did hear over the radio that a boat that came prepared with a livewell full of scup managed to get two of the whites to the boat. We went on the troll for a bit, and had one rigged ballyhoo get thrashed by a marlin’s bill, but the fish neglected to return to finish the job. As we cleared the lines, a nice mahi gave us some 11th-hour excitement before we headed for the barn.

No one was disappointed on the way back in as we re-hashed the marlin encounter, the sperm whale drive-by and the longfin fire drill. As with every trip to the canyons, we returned to the dock with a good fish story, which, all things considered, will last a lot longer than a cooler full of tuna steaks.