The stars aligned (wave forecast, wind forecast, lull in work) and I managed to get out on a mixed party trip w/ Capt. Don on the Labrador of Mass Bay Guides for a tuna trip on Thursday. The forecast was for 2-3ft seas but it was actually a lot flatter than that and made for a perfect day, along with the weather which was partially overcast so we didn't get sunburnt too badly.
After the usual boring wait for something to happen, Capt. Greg on the Fortuna hooked up first and managed to land a 90lb tuna before we got anything. After trolling for a bit longer, we got a heavy hit on one of the squid bars and it almost spooled us while we tried to reel in the other rods. Harry drew first pull (lottery system to see who goes first...turned out Harry was best qualified since he'd gone out 4-5 times this year already, and Jay had a back back and my noodly arms would probably have gotten butt kicked by Harry's tuna) but the harness came apart while he was getting strapped into it, so the 1st mate had to help him put it back together while we reeled in the other rods. After a long impressive 20min battle w/ 5-6 runs, Harry boated Charlie. Turned out to be the biggest fish of the day amongst all the ships on the radio. 70" and roughly 250# and it had to be hauled into the boat w/ a block&tackle.
We unfortunately didn't get any tuna hits after that but there were 30# small ones around.
Sounds like there were a lot of tuna from this writeup, but I thought it was relatively quiet for fall. There seemed to be a lot of boats that got skunked and there weren't that many marks on the fishfinder. The netting of these in the Mediterranean has to stop..
This is the first time I've ever seen a tuna live and it's an amazing creature. The skin is irridescent like fresh mackerel. The fins have indentations in the body to tuck into. The little yellow tiny things after the dorsal fin on the back are actually little fins that it can use to make smaller course corrections. It's built for speed and it's almost like it has racing stripes, spoilers, and a cool paint job :-)
Afterwards, we headed over to Race Point for some striper jigging through sand (out of casting distance of the shore guys who didn't seem to be having any luck)...weirdest way to fish I've seen off a boat, but it worked. Ended up boating 3 shorts (24-26" long) and two keepers (30-31" and relatively skinny). Harry was still basking in his achievement, so Jay and I hooked the stripers and each caught a keeper.
Good day w/ Capt. Don and 1st mate Brendan and we had so much meat, we insisted they take some home w/ them too, so everyone got to have sashimi that night
Pics:
1 - gotta be a good day when the sun breaks through the cloud cover
2 - Harry fighting Charlie
3 - Harry hugging Charlie (yes, you can tell he was happy...I should have taken pics of him having a few beers after he caught it ;-)