Tuna questions for a new guy... - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

shocker · 08-13-2007, 06:41 PM

Hey, I'm new to this forum, AND new to tuna fishing. I went out this morning for Tuna and while we saw a lot of them, couldn't hook into any.

We went off the Isles of Shoals (off of Portsmouth, NH) and got out there by 5am, started seeing some action around 6am, with a school of REALLY big fish (much larger than footballs, looked to be 65+inch fish). We'd read in a few fishing reports and spoken to people that the technique is to get near the schools, and cast into them with a marauder or deadly-#^&#^&#^&#^& (using a Shimano 6500 baitcaster with braid and flourocarbon leader) and catch that way. Seems like a decent idea for footballs, but it wouldn't have been able to hold the size of the fish we saw this morning.

Additionally, the jumping action didn't last long, on average 15-20 seconds and then they were gone as quickly as they'd come. We could never get to the action (or close enough to cast) before they'd stop jumping. Is this normal, or do the footballs act differently (again, we don't think these were footballs, looked like pretty big fish when they were outta the water).

We know how hard tuna fishing is and that you'll get skunked MANY times before you finally hookup, but we'd also like to work on our technique, so is trolling the way to go? I spoke with someone on the dock today that said to troll with a big squid rig with about 150 yards of line out and at 6-10 kts.

Thanks, I'd appreciate any info and help!

(ps. the dogfish are HORRIBLE! went to see if we could get some bluefish or stripers and everytime we put a hook down a dogfish came up, even on a sabiki rig while I was catching pollock!)

Raider Ronnie · 08-13-2007, 07:02 PM

Welcome to the site

I'm curious about the meaning of the name
"Shocker"

shocker · 08-13-2007, 07:04 PM

heh.

no real meaning, years ago (4+) my buddy gave me a username at a forum, shocker. I used it and have subsequently decided to just use it as my forum handle since I'm not real creative.

Thanks for the welcome, any tuna insight?

Raider Ronnie · 08-13-2007, 07:20 PM

Ok,
1st thing I thought of is as the younger guys I work with describe
"giving a shocker"

Best advice I can give as far as tuna fishing is
Start Early !!!
We usually leave the dock by 3:00 am.
And once the fleet show up (some days I have counted more than 60 boats) Leave and get away from the crowd!

shocker · 08-13-2007, 08:58 PM

thanks!

yeah, we got there while it was still dark out, and never had any other boats to contend with, luckily, but I think our bigger issues are technique. if this casting thing works at all...and if we DO switch to trolling, what to we should use and where we should troll.

Piscator · 08-14-2007, 07:06 AM

Shock Her.................Shocker

keeperreaper · 08-14-2007, 07:31 AM

Welcome to the addictive game of tuna fishing. The advice I can give you is go early, go often. All the above mentioned methods work. Some better than others. Running and gunning for tuna is fun and frustrating. In my opinion pulling bars is the best way to catch numbers of fish. For giants nothing beats live bait. 10 mph or knots is way to fast. Good luck out there.

Tuna Burner · 08-30-2007, 01:38 AM

Best Thing to do is troll spreader bars some guys like to troll sreader bars with birds in front of them some without birds if you use birds you will usually stay with small fish as they like the white water but if you use just spreader bars thats what gets the giants going crazy keep your rigs as far back as you can don't let your leader hit the water in front of the rig as it will cause a ripple in the water and make for a bad day of fishing you can also use daisy chains or green machines work very well there is no secret to tuna fishing guys start striper fishing then cod fishing then they go into tuna fishing main thing is think simple play smart.