Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We ran the Healthy Grin out yesterday in search of Young of the Year bluefin tuna for Dr. John Graves. We started trolling little spoons on the 10-Fathom Hill inside of the weather buoy. There was nothing there. At the weather buoy, we caught some kinds of jacks. From there we started picking up frigate tuna, a lot of frigate tuna and some baby false albacore. We would circle wherever we found little fish, gradually trolling our way NE to a bit south of the Norfolk Canyon, in about 700 fathoms, where the boats were having a good marlin bite. We caught a single blackfin tuna, a handful of dolphin and a whole bunch of frigate tuna on the little spoons but no bluefin tuna. We got out to the marlin bite late in the day…frigate tuna and little dolphin were out there also. For the short time we were there, the action was good. We caught 3 white marlin missed a half-dozen others. No bluefin tuna but we did collect a DNA sample from each white marlin. We had a healthy blue marlin screaming drag on a big rod but the hook pulled before we were able to clear everything and get after it. The last white marlin we caught was on the last bait in the water. Gabe Sava was cranking in the last rod, one of the big baits, when a lit-up white came in and crushed it. It was a bit sporty out there.

We ran south yesterday to get in on the sailfish action of the previous several days. Within 10 minutes of getting lines in, we were hooked up to our first sailfish. It was going to be a great day. A sailfish has been on Charles Southall’s bucket list for a long time. We got that taken care of and shortly had another sail attacking a big bait. It would not switch off to a smaller bait and we did not get that one. That was pretty much it for the day. We caught dolphin and got covered up by false albacore several times.

There was a good marlin bite about 20 miles north of us but I stuck with the sails. We can “always” catch a marlin. Boats were calling in their catches of the last day of the Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament. One boat had 3 blue marlin, 5 white marlin, and a spearfish. There were a number of slams being caught with roundscale spearfish being the final leg. There are a good number of roundscales around. Dr. John Graves was at the Mid-Atlantic Billfish Tournament going on at the same time as the VBBT. He said that most of the white marlin weighed in were actually roundscales.

Where we were, the top boat caught 5 sailfish, well short of the double-digit catches of the previous two days. The sailfish were there. We saw then jumping and cutting up the water most of the day but we only got the two bites. We stopped at the B Tower on the way in and caught some jacks.

Today, I took Tricia, Cameron and his girlfriend, Haley out fishing. We left at the crack of 1, 1:30 or so. That is as in the afternoon 1, 1:30 or so. We ran all of 100 yards and put out some spoons. They cranked in bluefish and Spanish mackerel until they said that the long day was done, about 2:30 or so.

We took Dr. John Graves and his newest grad student out after cobia today. We caught three. We should have caught many more but we won’t dwell on that. We got DNA samples from each and we deployed what I believe is the first ever 6-month pop-up satellite tag placed on a cobia.

We ran the Healthy Grin to the Norfolk Canyon Saturday. It was a slow day for us. We caught a couple hammerhead sharks and Wes Blow caught a nice sailfish. There were some white marlin caught around us and a few boats had blue marlin encounters.

I had run my boat around to Dare Marina and Yacht Sales for the PSWSFA Youth and Ladies Tournament the previous weekend. I had a long list of things to be fixed on the boat. I told them that I was going to leave it there for the week and that none of this stuff is keeping me from fishing. I asked them to fix any of it they could get to and I would be running it back to Rudee Inlet Station Marina to fish offshore the following weekend. Mid-week, I got a call saying the boat was done. OK, what did you get to? All of it…I love that kind of service.

I ran the boat around Saturday morning and picked up the crew at Rudee. We trolled plugs along the beach for a king mackerel. We caught a cobia. The guys started putting out spoons and that was ridiculous. They never got out more than two. They were constantly cranking in nice Spanish mackerel.

Yesterday, we ran out to the Norfolk Canyon. The ride out was beautiful. When we got there, the wind picked up and rain moved in. It stayed that way most of the day. It not matter, fishing was great. We tried the live-baiting thing again. We caught chub mackerel, bridled them up, and trolled them around. We ended up catching 8 white marlin, jumped off about as many, and I do not know how many encounters we had. We caught one that did not have a bill. We collected fin clips for a genetics research project at VIMS and recorded hook location to see if the circle hooks are behaving the same as previous studies done with trolled ballyhoo. We have only tried this a few times and have had success each trip. A difference this trip is that we did not catch a single shark. That was a nice change.

Trolled the oceanfront for a king yesterday morning. Pulled the hook on a king near the boat. Caught a cobia.

We fished for white marlin at the Norfolk Canyon yesterday and had a good day. We caught chub mackerel, bridled them up, and slow trolled the area. It is a technique we first tried last summer. In our area, Captain Randy Butler on the Rebel is the master at doing this. We fished near each other and kept in touch over the radio most of the day. We ended up with a similar catch. Both boats had tilefish and a tuna in the box and both were flying release flags back at the dock. The only real difference was our shark catches. They only caught a dozen big hammerheads. We were on a shark catching roll. Mostly big hammerheads, having as many as 4 hooked up at the same time with others with them. We caught one non-hammerhead, I think a dusky, that already had a big circle hook in it. It probably was a long-line hook. We released it with another circle hook. Not ten minutes later, we were hooked up again. It was the same shark, now with three circle hooks, each on the left side of its jaw. I guess he is a left side chewer.

We ended up catching 5 white marlin, pulling the hooks on a couple of others short of the leader and had a few more that we did not get hooked up. We collected DNA samples for VIMS. The Rebel did a little bit better. They released 20 white marlin and jumped off 17 others. They ended up with 4 times the flags we did. There is more to this technique that we have figured out. Their tuna was also 4 times larger than the 50-pound yellowfin we caught. Their one tuna was a 200-pound bigeye. So, pretty similar catches. Just take the Healthy Grin catch, multiply by 4 and you have the Rebel catch (other than the sharks).

I did a little boat maintenance Friday morning to get ready for Saturday. While I was there, I thought that I might as well slip out of the inlet for a bit and troll for a king and look for the schools of red drum that have been off of the oceanfront. I did not get a king bite nor did I find the drum. I did see some cobia off of Sandbridge. I did not have any eels with me and they mostly were not interested in my jig. I did get two to bite and lost both of them.

Saturday, the guys wanted to go offshore bottom fishing so off we went. Made a drift and caught blueline tilefish and sea bass so fast that I said we had better stop and count what we have in the boat. We had 39 of our 42 tilefish limit. It was not even breakfast time yet, we needed to leave there. We moved deeper and caught 4 golden tilefish including the smallest I have seen. We let that one go (probably should have kept it, I think there is some study looking for baby golden tiles) and kept the other 3 to finish out our tilefish limit. We moved again to deeper than we normally catch bluelines but shallower than we usually catch goldens to a spot where we have caught grouper. We started catching hake and some nice sea bass. Deep for sea bass but that was OK until we started catching bluelines again. Tried to move out of them but caught more. Not wanting to catch anymore of those that we would have to toss back, we came in early (did not have trolling stuff on board).

Sunday, we ran up in the bay and looked for cobia. We saw plenty and caught one. Some were too small to cast at. I left there and ran back down to Sandbridge as the cobia I had seen there on Friday were some nice ones and I still wanted to find those drum. We got a call from Charles’ son saying that they had schools of drum off of the 4th Island of the CBBT. We had run right past them. We didn’t want to make the run again. We did catch another cobia and one of the guys put out a little spoon and caught some Spanish mackerel. Never saw any drum but we did have a couple of king mackerel air out (king mackerel stuff was back at home).

Back at the dock, the marina manager said that red drum and kings were caught off of the oceanfront on Saturday when we were offshore bottom fishing. He and his wife had caught flounder around some of the wrecks then tried trolling for a dolphin at the SE Lumps but caught a big wahoo instead in that shallow water. He had the photo to show me.

We ran to the south towers yesterday. We got to the A Tower and started catching amberjack. There were a number of smaller fish though Charles Southall caught a 52-inch fish on the first drop of a live croaker. We ran on down to the B Tower and stopped using the live bait as the jacks were thick and aggressive. They attacked any jig or top water type lure as soon as it hit the water. We cranked on amberjacks until we were all worn out. We then trolled for a bit near the tower, catching several dolphin and a false albacore, Gabe Sava caught our largest jack at the B Tower, 53.5 inches, but again the majority were smaller.