Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We have had a change in our family. We lost Flounder earlier this year. Last week, Marlin passed away. Flounder and Marlin were chocolate labs that were a big part of our family. Before Flounder and Marlin, we had Fisher and Perch, black and yellow labs. Our children are older now. Cameron is getting ready to head off to college. Casey will be starting high school. Tricia said that after Flounder and Marlin, we would not be getting more dogs and traveling more. That did not last long. Those dogs were too large a part of our family. Yesterday, we welcomed Cobia and Tuna; seven weeks old and they are already making themselves at home.

We went back to the Triangle Wrecks yesterday and found the bluefish waiting. Capt. Rick Wineman was already there jigging them up. He said that everyone on his boat had caught multiple citation-sized fish and that they were off to the canyon. We caught all of the large bluefish that we could want. We caught them both trolling and jigging. We caught our largest fish on the troll. We released most of them but some are destined for the smoker. Five of those weighed for citations between 16 pounds and 17 pounds 8 ounces. The guys all had multiple releases that qualified for citations but they did not fill out paperwork for those.

We did some flounder fishing and caught a few. We also caught some nice sea bass that had to be released.

A disturbing thing happened when we caught a couple of false albacore. I am not sure what is most disturbing: that they were eating raw false albacore or that they were eating it off of the bait board. I did not think to get a photo until they were almost done.

We trolled for threshers a bit but did not have an encounter. Ric Burnley was out there and did some fishing for them. They saw two but did not catch them. One followed a plug up to the boat. The other came to a live bluefish that they were slow-trolling but did not eat it.

We ran out to the Triangle Wrecks today. We had the place all to ourselves. The chopper blues have arrived. We caught big bluefish on the troll and by jigging. Jigging was better. We also caught some false albacore. We used to keep them for bait but now, everyone is eating the bait. My wife ate some as soon as I got home. She said it is as good as tuna sushi and anyone who likes sushi will like it. Sea bass is closed so we were not targeting them but we still caught nice ones while fishing for flounder. Another flounder fishing bycatch was a sea creature that Wes Blow caught. He is always catching the weird stuff.

Outdoor writer, photographer and national speaker, Ric Burnley, will give a talk at the October 18 meeting of the Peninsula Salt Water Sport Fisherman’s Association. He will be talking about the fall run of thresher sharks off of Virginia. In particular, he will discuss targeting these impressive beasts on the troll. Meetings are free and you do not have to be a member to attend. For more information, visit: www.pswsfa.com/meetings.htm  .

The Grafton Fishing Supply/PSWSFA Spot Tournament was held October 1st and 2nd in rather blustery conditions. Only the hardiest of anglers braved the weather. These competitors were rewarded with a cookout featuring wild rice soup, homemade clam chowder, fresh fried fish and other hot food to warm them up. The weigh-in was held at Dare Marina and Yacht Sales. Prizes were paid through three places. Steve Martin took 1st place with a .74 pound spot. Jerald Abraham came in 2nd place with a .68 pound fish. Showing that you do not have to be an old guy to be a tough angler, 3rd place was won by 6-year-old Lexi Sava with a .64 pound spot.

Yesterday, we fished a little south of the Norfolk Canyon in 40 to 50 fathoms. Marlin fishing for us was slow. With the rain, I was not seeing them. I only saw two. One came in and did not bite anything. The other, we caught. Was hoping it was roundscale spearfish as we are trying to tag those things for Dr. John Graves. It turned out to be another white (now 27 whites in a row this month, without a roundscale). We caught 4 roundscales last year but now with the tagging study going on, we have not seen any. We had plenty of mystery bites and some of those were probably whites but there were a lot of dolphin, skipjack and other things around whacking at the baits. The one marlin put on a show and the rain stopped long enough for me to get out my camera. The top boat around us, caught 6 whites. There were a couple of blue marlin hooked up by the small fleet. In addition to the white, we caught 30 dolphin. Some were gaffed but none were what I would call a gaffer, nice bailers. We caught a variety of skipjack, false albacore, frigate tuna, and 2 young-of-the-year bluefin tuna.

A couple of weeks ago, we went out looking for YOY bluefin and did not find any. Brandon Bartlett told me that he had been catching some near the canyon this past week. We put out one little spoon in the middle of our marlin spread to see if any were around. That spoon got bit a bunch and we did get the 2 bluefin. We now know that there was another spawn down in the Gulf this past spring. I delivered the the tuna (and a couple of finlets collected by Brandon) to VIMS this morning. (note: collection of these fish is done under a closely regulated scientific permit process.)

Dr. Graves had a photo of a pop-up satellite tag. He asked me if it looked familiar. Most of his work with these tags has been with offshore fish. We did do a small study with striped bass (10 large fish) and then did some work with red drum. We put out one in a red drum to test the idea. Then we tagged 15 big reds one weekend (great fishing, caught a lot more than 15). There were some interesting insights shown about red drum (still waiting to read the final paper). One thing shown was a significant movement offshore of some of these large fish. John gave me 2 re-built tags (these tags can be re-used at a fraction of the cost of a new tag) to try to capture more information on this offshore activity. I was in our little boat, fishing by myself, when all 5 rods I had out, got clobbered by big red drum. I activated the tags and had a challenging fight to finally net the first fish while trying to keep the other 4 lines tight. Tagged and released that fish. Got the 2nd fish in and went to tag it. The tag was gone. I believe that I snagged it with the net and tossed it overboard while trying to land the first fish. The tags are suppose to transmit if they remain at the same depth for a specified time (as in a dead fish). We could go get it but this one did not show up during the normal reports. About a month later, John checked on that individual tag and it had been transmitting all that time (for some reason, not showing in his overall tag reports), but now the battery had died over that month so now we could not get it. We knew it was in the Eastern Shore marsh somewhere. Well, Irene changed that. My lost-forever-tag was recovered by a girl looking for seashells at Corolla after the storm. Makes me feel a little better about stupidly throwing one of those expensive tags overboard. Now the tag can be re-used again. Of interest, with the 10 striped bass and 17 red drum we caught on recreational tackle, and fitted with these tags, no mortality was seen.

With storms and fronts rolling through, we have no idea how long this bite will last. Get out there if you can. Call your favorite charter boat today. Those guys are fishing even without charters. They are rounding up family and friends and going on each other’s boats. Get out while the bite is on. We got 16 white marlin yesterday. Probably had a legitimate shot to hang 30 flags. Fish were being caught from just north of the Norfolk Canyon on down to the 41000, from 50 to 500 fathoms. The best of it yesterday was the 41150 to the 41200 in 300 to 500 fathoms. There were boats from as far away as Cape May fishing in the fleet there. Top boat I heard had 31. Some blue marlin were caught as well as some bigeye tuna. There were some interesting fights on the little white marlin tackle. Boats that overnighted there had some swordfish. Great fishing right now.

We were actually targeting some fish for Dr. John Graves. We trolled little spoons for baby bluefin tuna. We caught false albacore and bullet tuna. No sign of the young-of-the-year bluefins. We were also targeting roundscale spearfish to place pop-up tags in. We only caught the whites. Good trip for not catching a single targeted fish.

We landed 4 doubles. The most we had hooked at a time was 3. Never landed a triple. Did bail one. Fighting one fish and I saw another just sitting there looking up at the bait dangling from my rigger. Dropped the bait down into the water and he just ate it. Got both of those. Absolutely slick calm out there.

We left Rudee Inlet dark and early Saturday morning with the intention to fish through Sunday. On the way out engine problems caused us to not get out there until lunchtime. Fished around the 41300 out close to 500 fathoms. Hooked 5 whites, caught 3. Had some other encounters. Drifted the night with squid and a school of small jacks in the light all night. Caught one small swordfish. Wes Blow had brought chum so that was flowing all night. Never had a shark encounter. The sword ate a live spot. Back on the troll at first light and the engine problem was back. Starting trolling in on one engine and a white or two were in the spread. It was hard to see as it was not very light yet. Hooked one. No backing down with one engine so Wes just had to take is time from a dead boat. Fish were there but we had a long troll back to VA Beach so we kept heading west. Got jumped by dolphin, hooking several and a whole big school came in with them. The guys started slinging dolphin. We had moved everything back into the cockpit so we could tilt the engine hatch up. Dolphin were everywhere. I was scrambling to get stuff out of harms way. The guys started bailing and Charles Southall asked how many of these things do we want to catch? His son, Hunter, said “all of them”. We stopped at about 30 and “ran” away from those things.

I am supposed to be helping to tag roundscale spearfish with pop-up tags for Dr. John Graves but so far we have only caught whites. I also catch baby bluefin for the scientists each year and now is the time they should be here. We were at trolling speed so we pulled out the Spanish mackeral stuff and put out some spoons. We caught a frigate tuna and then from about 30 fathoms on in, we could not troll 5 feet without hooking up false albacore. Stan Simmerman and his 13-year-old son, Deven were fishing with us. Deven was having a blast with those things. We were never going to get home. Again, I asked, how many do you want to catch? Deven would not quit. We finally just took the spoons out of the water.The dolphin were full of little jacks. The false albacore were spitting up sand eels. Wes kept a dozen of the alberts for future bait.

The Healthy Grin is at Dare Marina. They say that I will be good to go by Thursday. I love Dare Marina. www.daremarina.com  

Fishing is good, get out there if you can.

All Tackle Records for Grouper, snowy

Weight: 31.95 kg (70 lb 7 oz)

Location: Norfolk Canyon, Virginia , USA

Catch Date: 5/22/2011

Angler: Roger C. Burnley

Roger Burnley’s snowy grouper, that he caught this past spring, has been approved as the new All-Tackle World Record by the International Game Fish Association ( www.igfa.org ).

Roger’s fish had previously been approved as the Virginia State Record: http://www.mrc.virginia.gov/vswft/St…_06-01-11.shtm

This is the second time that Roger Burnley has set the All-Tackle World Record for Snowy Grouper. It is the 6th Snowy Grouper world record caught on the Healthy Grin: https://healthygrinsportfishing.com/?p=1658

The billfish bite is good right now with signs that it could turn epic yet again this year. We got out Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday we went 0 for 8 or so. Broke one off right above the hook. Not much pressure on the fish but the leader broke for some reason. The rest we just plain messed up. Talked about changing the boat name to “We Suck”. Top boat at our marina was flying 10 flags.

Sunday, we did a bit better. Saw a lot of fish. Not crazy yet, but good. Birds and marlin working bait balls here and there. Free jumpers, tailers. Inshore mostly, 50 fathoms. Boats offshore are seeing fish too but so far, the top boats (10-11 fish a day) have been around 50 fathoms. The area from the 40900 up to the 41200 was a good area this weekend. We had the hook pull on 3 fish during the fight. We had 2 or more fish in the spread a couple of times. Missed right many fish, too much action to keep count. We caught 4. There will be some high catch counts in the VBBT this week (storm permitting). www.vbbt.com

The Ladies tournament was yesterday. I think Sniper won it. Lots of white marlin being called in, heard a couple of blues, and a first: “roundscale spearfish” release was called in.

The 4 we got were whites except maybe for 1. 13 year-old Deven Simmerman, got his first marlin. One of John Graves grad students, Ben Marcek, got his first offshore fish ever. We billed the other 3, we wanted to bill this one to get a better look at it. It was definitely the smallest fish but it fought the hardest. (note: Ben used a harness, someone commented that they did not remember John’s other grad student using a harness).

The thing was not lit up like the 4 roundscales we caught last year but it was acting and it looked a bit different. Ben had the leader up multiple times but we could not bill that fish. Hook eventually pulled. Did not put on any aerial display other than the initial hook-up. Roger stuck his camera under water and got some kind of picture of it. We will see what that shows. We had a pop-up tag for a roundscale. Guess we will just have go out and try again. Go away Irene!