8-01-08 to 8-02-08

Time: 2pm Friday to 5pm Saturday
Crew: Pat, Harrison, Greg,Tim
Water Temp: 78.0
Tide: All
Wind: South West
Conditions: Day 1 Sunny and calm Day 2 Bumpy w/ Storms
Caught: Nice Yellowfin and 4 mahi

Well folks, we didn’t slay them out there, but we did bring home fish and have fun!I meet Greg, Harrison, Tim (recommended by Zyg) and my nephew Pat at the marina at 1:30 in the after noon - loaded the bait locker with three flats of butter fish (WOW - $35 a flat now) a flat of sardines, a flat of mackerel, a bucket of chum and four huge squid.

Filled the fish locker with ice, and after a quick VST fuel filter change on the port motor we were ready to go. (I started noticing a little hesitation in the motor coming in last week so it is better to be safe than sorry - I like the twins to behave when getting ready to run 250+ miles!)

Left the marina and pointed the bow towards Montauk - five big guys, full of bait, 250 gallons of fuel, ice, boy was she heavy - forcing us to run at only about 28 mph.

The seas were nice with only a little bounce now and again as we made our way to the edge – tried for Mahi about 40 miles out and found one pot swarming with mahi.

Only one fish was aggressive enough to take something in our spread, but if we had the time to stop and chunk we could have had a bunch.

We put the full spread out in about 300 foot of water and headed to the east side of the dip.

As the sun approached the horizon the spread got attacked by skip jack’s – a good fire drill to show Tim how landing tuna could be.


Another attacked by the skip jack’s right before sundown was the only action we saw on the evening troll.Set up past the dip in about 600 foot of water for the night.

The wind was blowing and pushing the boat a solid 1 mph.

What a nice night with clear skies and stars as far as the eye could see.

We set out two sword rods – one at 200’ and one at 50’ – two tuna rods and a shark rod.

There was good life around the boat all night, with live squid being caught for tuna baits.

A small mako charging into the slick about 2am gave us some hope – then the 50’ sword bait goes off, hook is set and just out of sight we hear crash as the suspect mako flies out of the water, but it was over as quickly as it began with the line going slack.

Chatter on the radio bolstered confidence that it wasn’t just us, nobody was picking up fish up on the chunk.

Right as we are reeling in the rods for the night a small fish darts into the slick, Greg puts out his 16VSX with a jig and is rewarded with a nice fight from a small yellow – fish is only 24 inches so it is released, but still fun.

Put the trolling spread out and head off the edge with hopes of some big eye.

At about 6:30 we get covered up by yellow fin – the gas is hit a couple of times with about five rods getting bends in them.

Unfortunately nearly all of the fish came unbuttoned before the rod was even taken out of the holder, with only one rod still peeling line it was given to Patrick to fight.

After a nice battle we boat this nice yellow – I thought this was a nice large fish and decided to have it weighed – would anyone care to guess the weight – as we were all shocked with the reading on the scale!

That was it for action – we hit the area hard trolling from 1000 feet to 300 feet and back again, working the dip, south of the dip and to the east.

Nothing at all.Picked up lines and headed north to try our action in 250’ of water.

We were rewarded with a few more mahi off of the pots, but that is it.

Made good time home in flat seas until we rounded Montauk and we could see the strong storm clouds.

By the time we got the race we were in the storm – it sucked – heavy rain, strong winds – but with three miles to get home we made due at 15knots.


Of course the rain stopped once we got the marina.

It was a really fun time on the water, and to be honest, with the reports and conditions out there, I am happy with one nice solid yellow as some people weren’t getting anything.

There was some talk of a big eye bite the day before, but for the most part the fish have not been co-operating.
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