Not Marlin Fishing 9-20-13

The marlin bite is on fire out of Virginia, so we went and trolled small Clark spoons all day. On board, we had Dr. John Graves and one of his new graduate students, Will, who is fresh out of Harvard. Our target was young-of-the-year Bluefin tuna. We fished the Cigar area all day (where we have caught these little critters in the past). We pulled spoons behind planers and in-line sinkers. We caught blackfin, skipjack, false albacore, and bullet tuna but not a single Bluefin. The by-catch was pretty good. We pulled “regular” baits from the riggers, hoping for a wahoo or something. No wahoo but we did catch 2 of 3 white marlin that came into eat. One came in and managed to snag itself when it crashed a big bait intended for wahoo. We also caught a bunch of dolphin. The guys released a lot of them and back at the cleaning table, they wished that they had released more. Will had a good day, earning two citations on his first Virginia fishing trip. He released a white marlin and he weighed in a 25.5 pound dolphin. When we got back into Rudee Inlet, there were so many release flags flying that I’m surprised some of those riggers were able to stay upright.