The quest for the big tuna.
August 8, 2020
Boat: Mahi's Pursuit
Captain: Chris Barclay
Crew: Chris Rumul, Chris Harrison, Chris St James
Chris x4 Bonus Mission!
The four of us arrived at West Island Marina at 4 AM. The drive out to Fairhaven was foggy, but it wasn't too cold. Clouds were supposed to lift by mid morning so we were excited for a nice day on the water. Captain Chris Barclay's plan was to get out early and head straight for Tuna Ridge in Buzzards Bay. (40° 55.887' N 71° 14.615' W).
On the way out of Fairhaven/Mattapoisett past the islands we were talking about the high flyer buoys and fishing for Mahi Mahi. The story is that essentially any floating object, whether it be a piece of drift wood, a patch of seaweed, or in this case a high flyer buoy, attracts the Mahi Mahi to that spot. The idea is you just cast around an object like that and they will be swarming.
Sure enough, even though it was still quite cloudy and dark at around 5:42 AM we noticed a buoy. Captain Barclay stopped the boat and we all started casting at the buoy with epoxy jigs. We all hooked up with baby Mahi Mahi, about 6 of them or so we got on to the boat. Tiny little things but excited not to get skunked for our entire day out. Shortly after we continued out to Tuna Ridge.
We arrived at Tuna Ridge around 6:30 am and put out 6 rigs. Right off the bat we thought we saw some action and fish jumping however it turned out to be pretty quiet. After about 90 minutes of trolling back n' forth over the ridge it was still quiet. A few of us with kids took naps on and off, peaceful but not the peace we wanted. The peace we want is reeling in a tuna!
Clouds didn't seem to be lifting as we thought, it was pretty gloomy, and no signs of life anywhere, no birds, no dolphins, no splashes and the deadline of 2pm to get back to our families we finally gave up the tuna ghost at 1030am. We did decide however to switch over fishing for sharks.
I personally, never even really understood how this works and I was especially curious when we started inflating balloons. However, the idea is this, you rig up large mackerel on large circle hooks and tie on a balloon to use as a bobber of sorts. You let the lines out at different distances about every 25 feet. So in this case 100 ft, 75ft and 50 ft. After those are out in the water, you start chumming. We brought out a huge chum bucket and started drilling in holes into it, once the holes are in, you tie that to the boat. Also, we had dog food dipped in steak sauce (jk, not sure what that was) and threw that in the water. The idea is the chum and the dog food would get in the current, with our lines and lead the sharks right to the mackerel.
Well, again, nothing. The only thing that was happening is we had some very satiated birds eating up all the dog food. Every once in a while a birds black wings and the crest of a wave would look like a fin, but not so much. At about 1115am, we were getting more frustrated and started drilling more and more holes in to the chum bucket praying for anything to hit.
To help with our luck with the fishing gods we also started cracking open beers. "After the first beer you always catch fish". "After the second beer you always catch a fish, that's a fact". "After the third beer"...the sound of a line running...beer knocked off on the deck..."Someone grab that pole!!". I was right next to it and reached out and picked it up. The line screamed and what felt like a Chevy Tahoe started yanking the line away. The balloon tied on to the string would just go right underwater, for me, that was pretty insane.
I've never felt anything like this before..I caught a 48" Striped Bass one time, a few sand sharks, and even a Skate, but this was crazy. The line would just run and run, and I would crank and crank. Captain Barclay started asking me if I wanted a harness thing, and I was like "WTF is that?".
10 minutes into the fight, I got rigged into the harness. I actually still don't know what it was called but it essentially just gave me a spot that I could anchor the bottom of the pole on so I could get better leverage reeling in the...well we don't know what it is yet.
What a fight, maybe 15 minutes to get this sucker to the boat. A (we are just going to say) 10' Blue Shark we caught and reeled in. I couldn't believe how crazy that was, never have seen anything that big at the end of one of my lines before.
"Holy shit."
After we got the shark off the line, which was pretty scary all in it self. We packed it up and headed back towards Mattapoisett. The clouds lifted finally and started getting pretty warm, about 80 degrees. We stopped at a couple buoys to cast to see if there were fish, but nothing going on. We were still pretty pumped from the shark though.
What a day, we got back to West Island Marina at 2PM on the dot and scrubbed up the boat. The biggest takeaway is that the need to go out and find a tuna is now top priority on my list. Thanks for taking us out Captain Barclay!
#coldcoastmission