Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We fished for about half a day yesterday. Water was cold and the bite was slow but we did catch 8 tautog.

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We ran back out for sea bass again yesterday. No ice this time. Around 20 fathoms, we saw porpoise, whales and some bird action. I did not stop but I did tell the guys that on the way back in to have their tuna catching jigs on (as opposed to those bug jigs they have been using on the sea bass). We have caught bluefin tuna in those conditions. We got to our wreck and it was loaded with sea bass. Conger eels were also prevalent. We did not catch a single dogfish. We caught our limit of sea bass with fish to over 5 pounds. On the way in, we did not see the same activity but there were some birds, slicks and when I slowed down, we saw some big bunker floating on the surface. We had just missed something. We cruised around and saw some fish marks. The guys dropped their jigs and hooked up. No tuna or bluefish but big rockfish. We moved around a bit to see if we could find a tuna or bluefish. After a few tries in some different locations with only rockfish to show for it, we left them alone and came on in. It was good to see that there are still some ocean rockfish out there even though they are further offshore than I would expect to find them.

When we got close enough, we did call VMRC Operations to report that we were coming in with sea bass as required with the special February sea bass permit. The Marine Police did come and visit us at the dock. They just congratulated us on our catch and wanted to make sure that everyone knew that blueline tilefish was closed.

A few fish down there: https://www.facebook.com/HealthyGrinSportFishing/videos/1957731197601751/

It was cold and rough early, cold and calm late. The spray from the first wave froze on contact with the windshield. RADAR became very important. By the time we got to the fishing grounds, the boat was a solid sheet of ice. The water was warmer out there and were able to use buckets of it to thaw the deck so we could stand. It mostly worked. We did have one of us take a tumble….but he stayed in the boat.

We fished a number of wrecks. We caught sea bass, tautog and spiny dogfish. The dogfish were bad enough that we mostly went to fishing with artificials. Still caught some on the jigs but it did slow them down. When we left the sea bass and targeted tautog with green crabs, they mostly left us alone.

We had three fish weigh enough for trophy-fish citations: 2 sea bass and 1 tautog.

We had our special February sea bass permit and on the way in, I called VMRC Operations as required for this special season. I let the lady know when and where we would be in, what we were bringing in, and that it was very cold. Her officers were welcome to meet us but that they should dress very warmly. We did not see any officers or anyone else for that matter. Not a single other boat all day out there.

We were supposed to be out there again today but made up a variety of reasons why we should stay home today. I think wanting to be warm was the deciding factor. We’ll forget how cold we were by next weekend.

We got out yesterday and did some bottom fishing. As expected, the spiny dogfish were bad, especially on the south side of the canyon while trying for golden tilefish. On the north wall of the canyon, we caught a lot of smooth dogfish…like the canyon was a dividing line. We also caught a dogfish that seemed almost a cross between the two. More body type and spots like a spiny but there were no spines. Stan says there is a dogfish they catch in the nets, wintertime, Eastern Shore that the watermen just call spotted sharks. I did not get a photo of that.  We caught a fish that had big eyes, big mouth, not much in the way of teeth that we are not sure of what it is yet.

We did manage to catch a single golden tilefish and some hake. We caught silver hake and a regular looking hake. I assume that most of the hake we catch are white hake. Since we got the world-record Carolina hake, the crew assumes every hake is another Carolina hake. Stan is going to weigh this one to see if it is bigger than Johnny’s record and then we would have to figure out what the hake it is.

We stayed deep all day to avoid blueline tilefish due to the closure. We still caught one in 100 fathoms. Deepest we’ve caught one of those. Used a seaqualizer gadget to release it down deep. Doubtful that it helped but we tried.

We ran to the Triangle Wrecks yesterday to see if the big bluefish were around. When we got there, we put out some plugs and trolled around. The bottom machine showed the fish hanging beside the Clark. I told Wes Blow and Johnny Boyd to drop jigs down to them. Wes hooks up with what has to be a record bluefish. Bluefish fight hard but he had a hard time getting this one up….because it was not a bluefish. It turned out to be a big black drum. He tagged and released it and dropped on the marks again and hooked up to another black drum.

We did end up catching bluefish but are were small. We tried for flounder for a while catching 5 to 24 inches long. While jigging for bluefish and drifting for flounder, we ended up with a nice catch of sea bass.

We fished the warm water just east of the Cigar yesterday. Our target was baby bluefin tuna and we failed at those. We caught a few frigate tuna and a dolphin on the little spoons. The big baits did better. We caught 2 out of 5 or 6 wahoo bites, 1 of 2 dolphin bites, think we had one tuna bite that pulled and we had a blue marlin hooked up for a bit before the hooks pulled.

We wreck fished yesterday. The main target were triggerfish and we caught a ton. Also had a good catch of sea bass, bluefish, a few jacks, and a couple of flounder. Also had some sandtiger shark encounters.

We went out with Dr. John Graves and his graduate student Douglas Jensen to tag cobia. We saw a few, caught one that was fitted with a satellite tag. We also caught some nice Spanish mackerel and false albacore. We fished just outside of Rudee Inlet.

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Retired Virginia Marine Police Officer, Keith Nuttall did his share for science today. We trolled for king mackerel while looking for cobia. No kings but we caught 3 nice cobia and a blacktip shark. All were released….the cobia with fancy new satellite tags.

I went out with Charles Southall this morning in a stiff NE wind. We did not fish long. We were back in about 10 am. We were very busy the few hours we fished. We landing 9 cobia and missed/pulled off others. We also caught a few sharks and a big ray. One of the cobia ate 2 eels and hopelessly tangled the other lines. Cut everything and re-rigged it all. Charles kept one cobia that weighed over 58 pounds. We released the rest up to 52 inches long. Wes was anchored up near us. We took him our eels when we headed in. At last report, he had caught 12 cobia and was still fishing.