Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We went out in fairly rough conditions today. We caught 14 flounder, a decent catch of sea bass, and all of the small bluefish we could handle. We also caught some world-record sized clear nose skates and yes, there is a world-record for clear nose skate. The current record is 3 pounds 4 ounces with a pending record of 4 pounds 2 ounces. Our first skate weighed over 5 pounds on the Boga Grip. The second skate was even larger. We had a couple other record-sized skates along with some smaller ones. We did not keep any of the skates so they are still swimming around out there if you want to catch a record.

The forecast did not look too pleasant when we were making our plans so we decided to fish some of the coastal wrecks instead of heading offshore. We caught bluefish, flounder and sea bass. We also hooked up a couple of nice squid, a little porgy, and plenty of skates and a few sharks. I lost the largest flounder of the day when the hook pulled right near the boat. Wes Blow made a gallant attempt to net the fish and he would have gotten it if he had had 6 more inches of net handle to work with. We caught bluefish by trolling, casting and jigging but I caught the largest blue of the day on a flounder rig that somehow managed to survive the fight. Similar to my flounder story, Wes had a big blue almost to the boat when his flounder rig parted.

Most nights during October and November, I’ve walked out on our dock to make a few casts. I’ve caught silver perch, bluefish, speckled trout, gray trout, flounder, and striped bass. The one species that has not made an appearance this fall is puppy drum. The fish are small but are fun on the really light tackle. I have landed rockfish to 23 inches and broke a nicer fish off last night when I let it get to a piling. I might have to go to heavier tackle if larger rock are going to show up.

We ran out to the Triangle Wrecks today. We were after big bluefish. We caught little bluefish. We did not catch a lot of anything or anything particularly large. I think we ended up catching 8 flounder, sea bass, a couple of triggerfish, 2 Atlantic bonito, a number of bluefish and some other critters. Our most interesting catch was an Atlantic Angel Shark caught by Stan Simmerman. This is the second one of these strange sharks that we have caught while flounder fishing.

Sunday was the original Dr. Neill’s 78th birthday. We were going to celebrate after church which meant that Saturday was my only day to fish. Saturday’s forecast was not pretty so when my mom asked if it was OK if we moved my dad’s party to the evening, I was all for that. I asked the crew would they rather fish all day in the rough on Saturday or fish in calmer conditions Sunday but I could only fish until 1pm. They chose the calm short day. We went out after wahoo. We caught 2 but that was out of about 12 wahoo bites. Some we did not find about until we checked baits and found the ballyhoo cut off right behind the hook. Others, I’m not sure how we did not catch them. At one time, we had 4 hooked up and managed to not catch any of them. One of those was being fought by Stan Simmerman when his line went limp. It had been cut right at the swivel, we assume by yet another wahoo. The last of the 4 lost was being fought by Virginia State Trooper, Josh Riter. It was his first time fishing with us and he had never caught any big fish before. It was disappointing when the hooks pulled. Finally, Jody Linthicum managed to get our first wahoo to the boat. Josh got another chance and caught his biggest fish ever earning his first Virginia Trophy Fish Citation. We had some other, non-wahoo bites that messed up the ballyhoo but without the wahoo teeth. We caught a false albacore and other boats around us caught yellowfin and blackfin tuna. There were also some billfish around with a number of white marlin being caught by the fleet. We did have one white that we were not succesful hooking. Other boats did better than us holding onto their wahoo bites with some catching double-digit hoos.

Our white marlin tags are popping off. 2 have been recovered, 1 is in the sound, 7 are way out. All are transmitting their data: “Ten of the tags are up and “talking”. The eight from your last overnighter should pop up in a week or so. It looks like at least three of the tags detached early (tether still attached). Two of those washed up and were recovered. The third is happily transmitting away in Pamlico Sound in an area that will not be easy to access. I’ve attached a map showing the location of the tags (two are up in Maryland at Microwave Telemetry).”

We are helping with white marlin research projects being done at Dr. John Grave’s lab at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. One project involves pop-up satellite tags that Dr. Graves received at the end of August. There is a little urgency in that Dr. Graves would really like the tags deployed this season. So we fished an overnighter yesterday to try and get tags deployed while the fish are still here. The marlin are caught, brought into the boat, fin clip taken (for a molecular genetics study), fish tagged, revived and released. While trolling for marlin, we put out a small spoon to try for young of the year bluefin tuna for yet other studies. We did not catch any bluefin. The spoon caught blackfin, skipjack, and frigate tuna. We put them to use as bait during the night, catching a swordfish and some impressive sharks. During the daytime, marlin fishing was good. We caught 8 white marlin. We got a DNA sample from each and released each with a satellite tag. The swordfish was large enough to keep but we released it. In addition to the science we were trying to do, the grad student collected remoras for more research and took a silvery fish that we could not ID back to VIMS.

We worked on a research project yesterday… which means we went fishing. We went out to catch white marlin. We are actually helping with two projects being done at Dr. John Graves’ lab at VIMS. White marlin are considered a single stock but with the bite going off at Virginia, Venezuela and other locations at the same time, there may be separate stocks that should be managed  separately. We’re collecting DNA samples here and others are collecting samples elsewhere in the Atlantic so that  the molecular genetics can be compared. The other thing being looked at is the affect of removing the fish from the water has on post-release survivability. The marlin are caught on circle hooks, brought into the boat for various amounts of time and a pop-up satellite tag is placed. The fish is revived and released. Post release mortality will be compared with 60 circle-hook caught white marlin released at boat side in a previous PSAT study.

Our trip actually started Thursday night when we headed out to the Norfolk Canyon in the dark. We got there about 2 AM and trolled in the dark hoping to catch another bigeye tuna. We did not get a tuna bite. At first light, we had the marlin spread out and saw our first marlin soon after. Dr. Graves said that we have a problem. He did not have the special tag stick needed for the PSATs. He said that we’ll just enjoy the day fishing. I told him that we had two of the best engineers around onboard and that it would not be a problem. Charles Southall and Gabe Sava, in short order, had a tagging stick made from a rigging needle, rigging tape and some type of screwdriver thing. We were back in businesses. Now we just needed to hold on to a marlin. We saw plenty and managed to catch 5. We should have caught more but 5 is good. One of them turned out to be a roundscale spearfish. We collected DNA from each of the fish but only placed PSATs in the 4 white marlin. While marlin fishing, we caught a dozen or so dolphin. We’ll be out there doing more research as soon as the wind lays down.