Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

The boat was full of snow and the forecast did not sound promising. Hunter Southall got some nice bait and he shoveled out the boat so we had to give it a try. The sea conditions were surprisingly nice: sunny and calm early, breezing up a bit in the afternoon.

We had Willy Goldsmith with us. He is a graduate student at VIMS who earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard. He is a New England native with a lot of togging experience up there. This was his first Virginia tog trip. I had told him that this might not be the trip to go on (cold, wet, rough) and that we were going just because we do stuff like that. He just laughed and said it sounds like home.

We caught 21 tautog. Our day ended when we lost our wreck anchor. Our largest tog weighed 9.25 pounds. We got fin samples from all of the fish for DNA research. Some tautog carcasses are also on their way to VIMS for something to do with that same project. Tautog skin is being sent to Harvard. I have no idea why. We kept the filets.

We used both clam and “white leggers” for bait. The clam got the most bites. The largest tog was caught on crab.

The Irv Fenton Rockfish Tournament is a month-long event hosted by the Peninsula Salt Water Sport Fisherman’s Association. This tournament is sponsored by Wilcox Bait and Tackle. Participants had the month of December to catch their largest rockfish, weigh it in at any certified weigh station, and get their weigh forms in by January 14. Despite less than stellar striped bass action, there were some nice fish caught.

1st Place: Ken Neill, III: 43 pounds
2nd Place: Dave Wineman: 39 pounds 8 ounces
3rd Place: Charles Southall: 37 pounds 6 ounces

All of the winning fish were caught on live eels. The 2nd place fish was caught at the high rise of the CBBT at night. Both the 1st and 3rd place fish were caught near buoy 40.

PSWSFA CHUMLINE JANUARY 2014

Wes Blow and I started the day tolling for bluefin tuna. We found thick bait, birds, and whales from 2 miles to 6 miles off of the beach. No tuna bites but Wes did catch a gannet on a pink Ilander. We anchored up on a wreck and caught 14 tautog plus some sea bass. One of the sea bass and three of the tautog had already been tagged. We tagged others, collecting DNA samples from each tog. Wes caught our largest tog of the day. It weighed in at 10 pounds 8 ounces. We were using clam, shrimp, and frozen green crab. We caught fish on all of it with the clam being the best bait.

While we were togging, Charles and Hunter Southall were in the Elizabeth River. They caught 5 speckled trout to 23.5 inches long.

We trolled for Bluefin tuna the past two days. We fished from 2 miles off the beach on out to the Hot Dog. We spent some time on the SE Lumps, where we had one hooked up last week. We had a toothy critter bite us off at the Hot Dog. We had more bait and whales in closer to the beach. We had not caught any rockfish while trolling around out there this winter until yesterday afternoon. We had all of our ballyhoo whammed. We got them back out and it was a full spread hook-up of rockfish again. Enough of that, those horse ballyhoo are not cheap and we had not brought enough of them with us to feed them to rockfish. We did not put out anymore ballyhoo until we stopped getting rockfish bites. They liked cedar plugs also. We had guys cranking in rockfish on 80-wides from the fighting chair. We had plenty of gaffs with us for tuna but had left the landing net on the dock as we were not expecting rockfish. Most, we were able to just unhook at boat side but some we brought into the boat to unhook and release them. We did not have a net but we did have a tuna door. We used that with some of the larger fish rather than dragging them over the side. Once we got out of that little flurry, we got the ballyhoo back out and did not have anymore bites. We did hear of a few other boats getting hit by the rockfish but did not hear of any tuna encounters over the two days of fishing.

We trolled the SE Lumps area today. At first light, we had a tuna explode on a ballyhoo/blue-white Ilander. Hunter fought the fish for almost an hour before the hook pulled with the fish near the boat. Shortly after getting the spread back out, we had another blow up on a cedar plug daisy chain. That bite did not come tight. Those were our only bites of the day. We did see a few groups of birds and saw some tuna working below them but did not get a bite out of them.

Yesterday, Charles Southall drifted eels near Plantation Light. He caught a chunky, 44-inch rockfish. Hunter Southall was in the Elizabeth River. They caught about 20 speckled trout to 28 inches long. Today, Charles took me back over to Plantation. We had two bites and one stayed tight. I caught a 47-inch, 43-pound rockfish. We quit fishing at noon to come in for New Year’s Eve celebrations (and to get ready to fish for Bluefin tuna in the morning).