I went over to the boat Friday morning to check the oil and stuff to make sure that everything was ready for our group of scientists the next day. I slipped out of the inlet and trolled the oceanfront for king mackerel for a couple of hours. No kings this trip. I kept seeing Spanish mackerel and little tuna creatures that I expect were small false albacore. To make sure that they were not the young-of-the-year bluefin that we were going offshore in search of, I put out a little spoon and caught a Spanish. The guys looking for cobia were having a good day.
Saturday, on board, we had Doctors John Graves and Hamish Small and PhD student Nadya Mamoozadeh from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Our volunteer mates were Danny Forehand, Capt. JT Hale, and Gabe Sava. We were on one of our yearly searches for baby bluefin tuna. We trolled Spanish mackerel tackle near the Norfolk Canyon. On it, we caught skipjack tuna, bullet tuna, dolphin, blackfin tuna, and 2 YOY bluefin tuna. The “2” is unusual. Typically, we do not find them at all or we catch a bunch.
Gabe being Gabe, we soon had one of the blackfin tuna rigged up and being trolled off a rigger. With these baby tuna around, there should be a blue marlin here eating them. We never did see a blue marlin. We did see a few white marlin and we did catch one of those. I did not get any photos of the white. It was kind of rough and I was driving the boat and trying to stay in the tower.
John and Danny caught a double of similar-size tuna. They looked the same coming in the boat but one is a blackfin and one is a bluefin.
