Big Sea Bass and Tilefish

We headed out to do some bottom fishing dark and early. The ride was not pleasant. We just kept going because the forecast was for it to calm down as the day went on. It finally did, but it was not a pretty morning. The fish did not care. We started catching some nice blueline tiles right away. No photos then, I was just hanging on to the wheel. There were some nice sea bass mixed in with the tiles and we also caught some bluefish. We moved over to the canyon wall and were going to make just one quick drop in the deeper waters. If the grouper were there, fine, but we were not going hunting. These short days do not give us a lot of fishing time. Our short drop turned into a longer one when Wes Blow hooked up to something big down there. While he was fighting that thing, other guys brought up big congor eels and Roger Burnley brought up a double of big bluefish. Wes’ fish finally broke him off. We made one more drop and caught a couple more eels. We left there to hit some wrecks for sea bass. At the tip of the canyon, there was thick bait, working birds, and the occasional explosion on the surface. The bait was small when we could get a look at it, probably sand eels and a lot of them. We did cruise around and tried casting to the areas of working birds with no hits. We had offshore stuff and ballyhoo on board. I asked the guys do we try for a bluefin or do go onto a wreck? They wanted to hit a wreck before we ran out of day. We went on into the Ocean Venture and caught sea bass, more bluefish and a nice flounder. When the sun went down, the sea bass slowed up and the conger eels got active so we ran on in to clean a box load of fish. Wes Blow caught the largest tilefish at 19 pounds even. Hunter Southall caught the largest sea bass at a bit over 6 pounds (should be the new state leader). We caught a few smooth dogs but no spiny dogs.

When we got in, Roger called his brother Ric. Ric was fishing the CBBT. They had caught a limit of tautog during the day and were then clobbering big rockfish at the high rise. Ric said that they had quit counting and had no idea how many big rockfish they had caught an released. Everyone had their citation fish. They were fishing with live eels. www.fishcrazy.info

Dr. Ken Neill, III
IGFA Representative
www.igfa.org
www.pswsfa.com
www.vbsf-hookedup.net/healthygrin/