Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We ran out after sea bass yesterday. We wanted to catch some before the season closes at the end of the year. We started seeing working birds about 20 miles from the beach. Then we saw bluefin tuna crashing the surface. We saw signs of Bluefin throughout the day, all the way out to the 50 fathom curve. The thickest of it was in the SE Lumps/Hot Dog area. We did not have our tuna (or rockfish) stuff with us. We did have some jigs and did try to get on them and jig. We had one hit that did not come tight. In every direction, we would see flocks of working birds and breaking fish. We had a big whale swim right under the boat making me a bit nervous but it did not touch the boat and the guys got their jigs out of the water in time. We tried to ignore the tuna and went on to a wreck. The first wreck already had a boat fishing it, a head boat was sitting on the second wreck. Our third wreck was empty except for big sea bass. We caught a bunch of really nice bass and we caught a couple of 17-18 inch flounder and a triggerfish. We then slipped on out to the 50-fathom curve to try for blueline tilefish. We caught some but mostly we caught more jumbo sea bass. We ended up keeping 93 big sea bass with multiple weighing more than 5 pounds with the largest weighing 7 pounds. Our largest blueline tilefish weighed 14 pounds.

PSWSFA CHUMLINE DEC 2013

The Healthy Grin has gotten a bit larger. With 8,000 hours on the engines, I knew I was going to have to do something in the not too distant future. My first Albemarle was a 265 Express. I used up 4 engines in that boat. The 305 Albemarle has been a fantastic boat and it sure has been a good fish catcher! I had pretty much decided to repower her in about a year or so if the engines continue to hold up (they are running great right now). Albemarle contacted me about a 33 they are building. They wanted to get me into one of their new boats. They offered to customize it and to reduce the list price by over 100K and to take the old Healthy Grin in trade and asked me what I wanted for her. Great deal for a great boat but still a lot more than new engines. I did a little research to find what the 305 Albe was worth and was surprised by what I found. There are a lot of good boats out there for sale and people do not use their boats. Some amazingly low engine hours on some very good fishing boats. Dare Marina had a 35 Carolina Classic listed that seemed too good to be true. I called the good folks at Dare and asked for an estimate to repower my Albemarle and said that I would like to take a look at that Carolina Classic. The boat looked brand new. The old saying “more important than the deal are the people in the deal” is often true. The people at Dare Marina are the best, www.daremarina.com . It turned out that a few of my friends had actually fished on this boat. They had nothing but great things to say about the boat and about the owner, Billy Price and his family. The Healthy Grin is now a 35 Carolina Classic. After almost two decades of running Albemarles, it is going to take a little time to get used to being Carolina Classic owner.

We ran the Healthy Grin out to the Triangle Reef. We tried for big bluefish. We caught little bluefish. These were turned into flounder bait. Flounder fishing was excellent. We caught 17, keeping our 12-fish limit. We left them biting and headed back in early. We also caught a few nice sea bass but only a few. On the way in, we found whales, bait and birds near the Chesapeake Light Tower. We did not get a bite out of that. The menhaden boats were working the area also. It was a gorgeous day on the ocean.

It was gorgeous out on the ocean yesterday. The Albemarle ran great. We caught fish. Life is good. We had a good catch of nice sea bass and tilefish in the Norfolk Canyon area.

PSWSFA CHUMLINE NOV 2013

Caught small speckled trout and puppy drum this morning. It was almost too windy to fish from the dock. Lost a nice striped bass last night. “Nice” means about 20 inches, there is a different size scale when fishing off the dock.

IGFA Announces 2014 Conservation Award Winners

Sportsmanship and conservation go hand in hand – anglers who hope for more and bigger fish tomorrow invariably understand the need to release catches they make today. Since 1993, the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) has been recognizing superlative achievements in fishing conservation with the annual IGFA Conservation Awards, bestowed upon honorees at the yearly IGFA International Auction & Banquet. This year the organization will give Conservation Awards in three categories at the event on January 31, 2014 at their headquarters in Dania Beach, Florida, USA:

Dr. Ken Neill III
IGFA Representative Conservation Award Winner:
Dr. Ken Neill III of Virginia, USA

With the family, friends, and crew who fish with him aboard Healthy Grin, Dr. Neill has contributed to a number of tagging studies and sample collection efforts. Of the dozens of projects Healthy Grin has been thanked for contributing to, Neill reports that some of the most rewarding are the few that have led directly to fishery management decisions. “By capturing young-of the-year bluefin tuna and collecting tissue samples from bluefin tuna of all sizes, as well as participating in a variety of bluefin tagging projects,” Neill reports, “we have helped scientists better understand the relationships between the western and eastern stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna. This information is now being used in international management decisions.”

We ran out to the Triangle Wrecks to see if there were big bluefish there yet. We caught two little bluefish. They were not the ones that we were looking for but they did provide us some strip baits for flounder. We caught 20 flounder. We did not get any really big flounder, “good eating size”. I lost the one doormat we had. Stan Simmerman caught the largest flounder that we did catch. We also caught some nice sea bass that we had to let go due to the closed season. Wes Blow did catch a nice puppy drum that was just small enough to keep. We caught a couple of ribbon fish. Chris Boyce caught one. I caught the second one. Right before I caught it, Wes had his hook bitten off of his flounder rig. My ribbon fish was made into more flounder bait. Inside it’s stomach, we found Wes’ hook with his bait still attached. Wes was able to re-tie his hook and get back to fishing!