Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

The Grafton Fishing Supply/PSWSFA Spot Tournament was held during the NE blow this weekend. The wind had everyone looking for protected water to fish in. Despite the blustery conditions, plenty of spot were caught. The tournament culminated with a picnic, at Dare Marina, where plenty of tasty spot were eaten.
This year’s Spot Champion is Steve Martin, who weighed in a .51 pound spot. Steve won a rod and reel from Grafton Fishing Supply and cash.
The Second Place spot was a .48 pound fish caught by Chris Nelson. Chris barely beat out his wife, Rachel Nelson, who weighed in a .47 pound fish to take Third Place.
There was a Youth Division that was won by brother and sister. Lexi Sava took First Place Youth with a .30 pound spot. Her brother, Caleb Sava, won Second Place Youth with a .18 pound spot.

We had planned to run out after the marlin today. With a bumpy forecast, we decided to stay in and try to catch a king mackerel. We did not catch any kings. We had two fish hooked. The first turned out to be a 5 pound 8 ounce Spanish mackerel for Chris Boyce. The second fish was larger but the hook pulled. It may have been a king but we never saw it. We stopped over a wreck and caught some triggerfish. We kept a dozen. Again, Chris had the largest fish but he lost it when he tried to swing it in the boat. We caught some small flounder, sea bass and 4 small gag grouper.

The marlin bite is on fire out of Virginia, so we went and trolled small Clark spoons all day. On board, we had Dr. John Graves and one of his new graduate students, Will, who is fresh out of Harvard. Our target was young-of-the-year Bluefin tuna. We fished the Cigar area all day (where we have caught these little critters in the past). We pulled spoons behind planers and in-line sinkers. We caught blackfin, skipjack, false albacore, and bullet tuna but not a single Bluefin. The by-catch was pretty good. We pulled “regular” baits from the riggers, hoping for a wahoo or something. No wahoo but we did catch 2 of 3 white marlin that came into eat. One came in and managed to snag itself when it crashed a big bait intended for wahoo. We also caught a bunch of dolphin. The guys released a lot of them and back at the cleaning table, they wished that they had released more. Will had a good day, earning two citations on his first Virginia fishing trip. He released a white marlin and he weighed in a 25.5 pound dolphin. When we got back into Rudee Inlet, there were so many release flags flying that I’m surprised some of those riggers were able to stay upright.

http://www.sportfishingmag.com/species/fish-species/virginia-anglers-dig-deep-big-black-sea-bass?image=158887

After spending last week in meetings of the NMFS Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, it was time to get the Healthy Grin back out after some highly migratory species. We got back out there yesterday. The marlin bite out of Virginia is still epic and it was a beautiful day on the ocean. We hooked a dozen white marlin and got 6 to the boat. We saw right many more. They would come into the spread in packs. There were times when we were fighting fish and there would be another hanging out beside the boat, checking out a teaser dangling in the water. Our catch was about average. Good boats had double our catch and the top boats, triple or more. I am sure that they are catching them up today. Get out there while it lasts!

PSWSFA CHUMLINE SEPT 2013

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/Advisory%20Panels/ap2013/fall/sept2013_agenda.htm

The Virginia Marlin bite is going strong. We took the Healthy Grin to the Triple 0s yesterday. The bite is great at the Norfolk Canyon but it was a better ride running a bit south. It did not matter, marlin seem to be everywhere. We did not do well with the white marlin, catching “only” 3. Many boats were in double digits. We had plenty of shots but only held onto the 3. We made up for it by going 2 for 2 on blue marlin: 300 pound class fish. In addition to the 2 blue marlin and 3 white marlin, we also caught some dolphin. Many boats spent the night out there last night so there should be some impressive catches coming in today. We would have stayed out there also but I had to come in as I have to drive up to the NMFS Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel meeting today.

It is September and the marlin bite is hot off of Virginia. That is not very surprising giving how the bite has been the past several years. This is a grand time to be fishing our offshore waters and I am very fortunate to live here. Get out there soon if you can. We never know how long the bite will last. It has been hot all through September the past couple of years and it is shaping up to be stellar again this year. We have already had a very good August bite as can be shown by this year’s Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament results. Sixty-nine boats fishing two days each caught 483 billfish: www.vbbt.com .

Yesterday, we took the Healthy Grin to the Norfolk Canyon. We had a lot of action all day long. I even got to crank on a couple of marlin. The hook pulled on my first fish after the fish decided to fight down and dirty. I had better luck with my second marlin and then I went back up top, where I belong, and stayed there. We jumped fish off, pulled fish off, and plain missed a bunch. It did not matter, more just kept coming in. I was playing tug-of-war with fish on teasers on each side while trying to drop back to fish on the long-riggers. We ended up catching 9 white marlin. We had a blue marlin come in and look at the short-rigger baits but did not eat.

I was backing down on a white marlin when we had quite a surprise. A very large whale surfaced right behind the boat, between us and our fish. Well, I stopped the boat and we just watched the whale. I knew we were going to break the fish off but our angler just held his rod up high and we were able to go get his marlin after the whale cleared.

In addition to the marlin, we caught 4 dolphin. We also had some mako shark encounters. There seem to be a lot of makos off of Virginia right now. Nobody was fishing for them but just about every boat out there had had at least one mako visit. Most ended in things like cut off teasers and destroyed dredges. Some were landed with a fortuitous hook placement. We had 3 mako bites. The first came out of the water and down on our short-rigger bait. We actually had that one about half-way to the boat before that fight was over. The other two bites were just clean cut-offs.

It is a really good time to be fishing Virginia right now.

I just got my Sept/October issue of Sport Fishing Magazine. There were a few of my photos in it. One is a little travel thing for Virginia Billfish. The others are in a 6-page article by our own Ric Burnley. “Black Gold!” starting on page 52, is about Virginia’s great sea bass fishery. There is another photo of Ric (he must be pretty) and one of Deven pulling a couple of bass over the side. There are some sea bass photos by a Mike Laptew that I wish I had taken.