Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We went back out after tautog today. It was rough but the bite was good. We caught 45 or so tautog before the anchor broke loose about 2 PM. We decided to head on in rather than trying to re-anchor. we caught 9 fish that already had been tagged. Each of those was re-released with its tag no matter how large they had grown. We registered 5 citations today with the largest two fish weighing in at 17 and 16.5 pounds. The next largest was 12 pounds. We have had a good start to the new year, catching big tautog on 2 out of the 3 days of 2016 so far. One of our recaptured tagged tautog was a repeat from two days prior. It had “grown” 3/4 of an inch in two days. In a “that can’t be right” moment, Wes re-measured the fish and reconfirmed that it was indeed 3/4 of an inch longer than what we had recorded on Friday. Measuring live fish in rough seas… It is a nice one and it is still out there. We will see how long it is the next time we catch it. On the way out, a whale breeched on the port side of the boat, then again and again. It came out of the water 8 or 9 times. A very impressive display that we were glad we were not too close to.

We ran out to the Triangle Wrecks today. We were joined by US Congressman Rob Wittman. It was a bit rough out there but we got a nice catch of tautog up to 11 pounds.

It is rather nice in Virginia right now. Yesterday, we ran to the Norfolk Canyon to try for some unusually late-season tuna. Before the day was done, we were all fishing in short-sleeves. Fishing was good. We caught a few dolphin for the first December dolphin we have caught out of Virginia. We caught 5 yellowfin tuna out of about 8 bites. Late in the afternoon, we had a very impressive explosion on the flat-line bait closest to the boat. The bigeye tuna came half out of the water. After a long fight, the hook pulled but now we had to fish longer. It was not too long after that when we had two big explosions on the short riggers. One came tight and we managed to hold on to that one. It’s tuna for Christmas dinners at our houses this year.

I ran up to the Plantation Light area in some rather choppy conditions today. Shortly after putting out my spread of eels, I was hooked up. It was a nice fish. I was fishing by myself so when I decided to keep it I was done with my big-fish limit. It made it a very short trip. I’ll try to catch a bigger one tomorrow. This one weighed in at 40 pounds.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Our son, Cameron, is home from Georgia Tech for Thanksgiving. With him, is his girlfriend and fellow Georgia Tech student, Haley. Haley has no fishing experience. Wanting to catch her a fish, we ran out for a very short trip to the Triangle Reef today. We saw porpoises and a couple of humpback whales near the Chesapeake Light Tower. There was a lot of bait in the area but after watching the whales for a bit, we ran on out. We did not fish long but we were successful in jigging up some sea bass and small bluefish.