Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We ran out with Dr. John Graves of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science yesterday. He brought along PhD student William Goldsmith. Willie took the attached photos. After I checked that he would send them to me to share, I stayed up top driving instead of coming down with my camera.

Our target was young-of-the-year bluefin tuna. Researchers have wanted them for various studies and we try to catch them some each year. Somehow, we have become the baby-bluefin catching experts for the research labs on the east coast (run offshore, troll for Spanish mackerel, and hope to get lucky).

It is a big ocean out there for a boat of one to try and round these things up. There is even more interest in catching the babies this year now there is evidence of another Atlantic spawning area so chasing babies we went.

We caught little blackfin tuna, frigate tuna, false albacore, various species of jacks, dolphin, and we did catch baby bluefin tuna. These bluefin tuna are actually headed to the University of Maryland for an otolith study. We also kept the blackfin tuna. They are headed to Harvard to be CT scanned for a study about tuna movement (Willie got his undergraduate degree from Harvard before coming to VIMS). The dolphin came home for dinner.

We ran out to the Norfolk Canyon yesterday to troll live chub “tinker” mackerel for marlin. We had to work at catching the tinkers. Better than the tinker bite was the squid bite. Our best squid catcher was Congressman Rob Wittman. He was loading up on those things every drop. Before becoming a Congressman, one of Rob’s previous professions was a charter boat mate out of the Outer Banks. In short order, he had beautifully rigged squid in the trolling spread along with the live mackerel. The squids looked great but every marlin, which we missed, and ever hammerhead, which we could not miss, wanted the live mackerel. We did not catch a single marlin out of a few encounters. Better boats did better but overall, it was a slower marlin bite out there for the fleet yesterday. We did end up with a nice bycatch of sea bass and blueline tilefish while catching bait and the guys got fresh calamari. It was a very calm ocean yesterday.

The past two months have been spent working on the Cobia Bowl and cobia fishing in the skiff. The Cobia Bowl is history and it was way past time to head back out to the blue water. The offshore tackle was covered in spider webs. The Healthy Grin was where we had left it and it was still floating. It was a sad sight. There was a birds nest in one of the teaser reels. A whole new generation had been born and flown the nest since the last time we had taken her out….leaving droppings everywhere.

The engines started and most things seemed to be working so out we went. We ran to the Fingers where bluefin tuna have been hanging out. We just pulled big baits and we got our one big bite. It turned out to be a 83-pound bluefin tuna. That was are only tuna bite. We did catch some nice dolphin and had a number of other dolphin bites that did not get hooked on the big baits.

It was good to be out in the blue water again and there will be no more birds nest on the Healthy Grin.

Stan Simmerman caught the tuna and Jerald Abraham helped hold for the photo after being the gaff man.

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Went out with Charles Southall on Saturday. We caught 10 cobia and then left them to try for drum. We should have stayed with the cobia. No drum for us but we did quit early. Bite might have happened if we had stayed into the dark.

I ran back after cobia this morning. Caught 4 and came in for lunch.

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Fished for cobia again today. Wes was near me. He caught 6 while I dealt with tangled eels. I did not get a bite until Wes headed in. He must have special chum or something because after he left, the cobia found my boat. I landed 10 with almost constant activity. Nothing big except for the southern stingray that was even larger than the one I caught yesterday.

Caught 6 cobia today to 42 inches and a big stingray. Wes Blow was fishing the same area. He had almost the same morning: 6 cobia to 42 inches and sea turtle.

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We ran back out after drum yesterday afternoon. We did not catch 32 this time. We caught 2 red drum and a cobia bonus catch. The cobia ate a clam. All of the fish were tagged and released and a DNA sample was collected from the cobia.

We went bottom fishing yesterday. We caught 19 golden tilefish plus a nice catch of sea bass and blueline tilefish. Caught and released 3 dusky sharks. Did not catch the two sharks we wanted. Steve Martin was trying to drop his bait to the bottom when it came skying back out of the water, right next to the boat, in the jaws of a mako. That fight did not last long. Later, we had another nice mako at the transom eating fish scraps we were throwing him while we scrambled to get something together to catch it. I just dropped a diamond jig in front of it and it ate that too. Had him on for a good bit but the hook pulled. A lot of life out there. The tinker mackerel are there and we caught a number of them.

We were supposed to head offshore yesterday but the windy forecast got us to cancel those plans. I suggested that we try an afternoon drum trip. Half the crew decided that staying home was a better option and we could not find any other takers so it was just Stan Simmerman, Wes Blow and myself that headed out. When we saw the breakers at the mouth of Rudee Inlet, we thought that the other guys were the smart ones. We went out anyway and made it over to Fisherman’s Island. The wind was howling and the drum bite was on fire. In about 4 hours of fishing, we landed 32 big red drum out of I do not know how many bites. We missed them, pulled hooks, and Wes broke one off. It was OK because later, he caught that same fish with his hook and trailing line still attached. All of the fish were released, some with tags. It was just too crazy with multiple bites and just the three of us to tag them all. We did have some clam out but no black drum bites, and no sharks, rays or skates either. Just a bunch of big red drum.