We headed offshore dark and early Sunday Morning. We got back Monday evening. We started out around the 100 fathom curve at the 41300. There was a pretty good marlin bite from the Norfolk Canyon to the Washington Canyon. The ladies billfish tournament was going on and that was where most of the boats were. Most had a good day. Capt. Steve Richardson, on the Backlash, had a Grand Slam of a blue marlin, 2 white marlin, and a spearfish. It sounded like everyone was seeing a good number of fish. We were not seeing any. We caught some dolphin while fishing our way north. In the afternoon, at the 41420, we found all kinds of stuff. Marlin were balling bait under working birds. Troll by and get whammed. I was sitting side-to, looking back when my teaser reel behind my head goes off. It got my teaser ballyhoo. Another got a flat line. A third went and hooked itself on a big bait. That was how it went. White marlin come in, we miss them, one hooks itself. Two of those we caught were on a pink/white Ilander/ballyhoo combination. Another teaser fish came in hot. I’m pulling the teaser in as fast as I can while yelling instructions to Wes Blow. We did not communicate very well. Wes reeled the flat line all the way to the boat. I told him to let it out some and that fish turned and ate Wes’ bait right at the corner of the boat as he was putting it back in. We got that one. While that fish was jumping around, I hooked another on a long rigger. Since everyone else already had marlin, I went downstairs to fight that one. I just held the rod while we worked on the first fish. Maybe, I should have backed off the drag a bit but I did not think the circle hook would pull… it did. Out of all this action, we only caught 3 white marlin. I personally pulled off 2 after hookup and I don’t know how many we missed. Before it got dark, we went to the Norfolk Canyon and made 4 drops. We caught 2 golden tilefish, 1 blueline tilefish, 1 snowy grouper (55 pounds), 1 sea bass, 1 blackbelly rosefish, and I caught a conger eel. It was my one catch of the whole trip.
We drifted all night for swords and sharks. Our squid baits still looked brand new in the morning. There are some swords around. A good number of squid boats are out there working the 100 fathom area. One pulled up a big swordfish. They said the bill was 5 feet long. We expected to see a lot of life but only a very few squid came into our light. Steve Richardson was staying out there last night so maybe he had more luck.
In the morning, it was back to the troll. The billfish action was down. I jumped off a white and we missed a couple of others. We caught some gaffer dolphin north of the Norfolk Canyon. Wes caught our largest at 21 pounds so nothing huge but some nice fish. We could hear the boats in the Mid-Atlantic 500 calling in their catches.
John Graves and Guy Harvey are at that tournament. They are there every year and seem to have a very good time but manage to get some work done. All the marlin brought to the scales at Cape May and Ocean City are examined and samples collected. This DNA data base was part of the investigations that led to the classification of the roundscale spearfish. These samples show about 18% of the white marlin weighed in this tournament are actually spearfish. John sent me this report about the first day of this year’s tournament:
Ken:
I hope you had a good overnight trip. Fishing was good here the first day of the tournament. Only 60+ of the 134 boats went out as the weather forecast only seems to get better through the week. About forty boats from here fished, but only two whites weighed in up here in Cape May, 63 and 69 lb. Jan (my colleague from VIMS) had a lot more action at Ocean City even though only 20+ boats went out. They weighed 11 “white marlin” of which 8 were roundscale spearfish. Top whites are 88 and 82, with three tied at 69. Most of the fishing lies ahead, but fortunately there are some big whites on the board, so that should limit little fish coming to the dock. No blues were weighed (400 lb minimum).
Cheers,
John
p.s. Guy sends greetings to you and Tricia. He came here straight from Tropic Star Lodge.
