Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

We headed offshore dark and early Sunday Morning. We got back Monday evening. We started out around the 100 fathom curve at the 41300. There was a pretty good marlin bite from the Norfolk Canyon to the Washington Canyon. The ladies billfish tournament was going on and that was where most of the boats were. Most had a good day. Capt. Steve Richardson, on the Backlash, had a Grand Slam of a blue marlin, 2 white marlin, and a spearfish. It sounded like everyone was seeing a good number of fish. We were not seeing any. We caught some dolphin while fishing our way north. In the afternoon, at the 41420, we found all kinds of stuff. Marlin were balling bait under working birds. Troll by and get whammed. I was sitting side-to, looking back when my teaser reel behind my head goes off. It got my teaser ballyhoo. Another got a flat line. A third went and hooked itself on a big bait. That was how it went. White marlin come in, we miss them, one hooks itself. Two of those we caught were on a pink/white Ilander/ballyhoo combination. Another teaser fish came in hot. I’m pulling the teaser in as fast as I can while yelling instructions to Wes Blow. We did not communicate very well. Wes reeled the flat line all the way to the boat. I told him to let it out some and that fish turned and ate Wes’ bait right at the corner of the boat as he was putting it back in. We got that one. While that fish was jumping around, I hooked another on a long rigger. Since everyone else already had marlin, I went downstairs to fight that one. I just held the rod while we worked on the first fish. Maybe, I should have backed off the drag a bit but I did not think the circle hook would pull… it did. Out of all this action, we only caught 3 white marlin. I personally pulled off 2 after hookup and I don’t know how many we missed. Before it got dark, we went to the Norfolk Canyon and made 4 drops. We caught 2 golden tilefish, 1 blueline tilefish, 1 snowy grouper (55 pounds), 1 sea bass, 1 blackbelly rosefish, and I caught a conger eel. It was my one catch of the whole trip.

We drifted all night for swords and sharks. Our squid baits still looked brand new in the morning. There are some swords around. A good number of squid boats are out there working the 100 fathom area. One pulled up a big swordfish. They said the bill was 5 feet long. We expected to see a lot of life but only a very few squid came into our light. Steve Richardson was staying out there last night so maybe he had more luck.

In the morning, it was back to the troll. The billfish action was down. I jumped off a white and we missed a couple of others. We caught some gaffer dolphin north of the Norfolk Canyon. Wes caught our largest at 21 pounds so nothing huge but some nice fish. We could hear the boats in the Mid-Atlantic 500 calling in their catches.

John Graves and Guy Harvey are at that tournament. They are there every year and seem to have a very good time but manage to get some work done. All the marlin brought to the scales at Cape May and Ocean City are examined and samples collected. This DNA data base was part of the investigations that led to the classification of the roundscale spearfish. These samples show about 18% of the white marlin weighed in this tournament are actually spearfish. John sent me this report about the first day of this year’s tournament:

Ken:

I hope you had a good overnight trip. Fishing was good here the first day of the tournament. Only 60+ of the 134 boats went out as the weather forecast only seems to get better through the week. About forty boats from here fished, but only two whites weighed in up here in Cape May, 63 and 69 lb. Jan (my colleague from VIMS) had a lot more action at Ocean City even though only 20+ boats went out. They weighed 11 “white marlin” of which 8 were roundscale spearfish. Top whites are 88 and 82, with three tied at 69. Most of the fishing lies ahead, but fortunately there are some big whites on the board, so that should limit little fish coming to the dock. No blues were weighed (400 lb minimum).

Cheers,

John

p.s. Guy sends greetings to you and Tricia. He came here straight from Tropic Star Lodge.

Had another pretty good weekend on the cobia. The water has gotten a lot dirtier and fishing was a lot tougher than earlier in the week. Fished Friday with Tom Czaplicki and his girlfriend Judi in some pretty bad rough and cloudy conditions. One of Tom’s goals for the year is expert angler and he is sitting on three so far so our mission was to get him a citation. We caught about a 30 pounder of a buoy and then found a big school of bunkers with two fish on it. We hooked both and Tom fought the bigger fish while Judi fought the smaller. Both fish fought very hard in a hard running current and did not want to cooperate tangling lines several times during the fight. Judi was making sounds similiar to Richie Moore on that big bluefin. After about at least 30 minutes and almost 3 miles from where we hooked up we boated both fish. Judi’s was about 40 pounds and I think Tom’s was 57 inches and probably would have made weight but we released it to make sure. Saturday fished with Sam Arnold and his buddy David from Harrisonburg. We found some decent water and fish off Newpoint and caught 11 up to about 60 pounds. We had three release citations up to 57 inches. Sunday fished with three generations of Phillips. Jack Phillips, his father Jack, and his son Josh. Fishing was tuff but we managed three fish between 30 and 45 pounds. These pictures are of Friday’s trip. Add to your collection or trash if you want. Don’t get in trouble:-) I’m anxious to here how the overnighter went. Hope you tore em up. Jorj Head

Ken, Dave Jenkins and I sight casted and ran the bouys for six hours with nothing, then we anchored up at York Spit, chummed for about two hours and killed ’em on the incoming tide. Final tally:54″ Cobia Release Citation (tagged)43″ Cobia Release (tagged)50″ Cobia Release Citation (tagged)64″ / 71lb Cobia (gaffed) Weight Citation We need to get back out there!Get Anet

Capt. Jerry Thrash

Queens Creek Outfitters

Patriot Charters

804-725-3889

www.queenscreek.com

Jerry@queenscreek.com

Fishing Report 8.16.10

Flounder fishing turned tough again this week. It was hit or miss one day to the next.

Croaker are availablein the Buoy 42 area and over to Buoy 40A. Over the wekend in the winds, we caught croaker to 12″ off our dock with the grand kids along with small speckled trout, spot and puppy drum. Spot averaging 1/2 lbs. are being caught off Gwynn Island, Butlers Hole and the Spike. The first reported yellow bellied spot were caught around New Point on Sunday.

Spanish Mackeral and bluefish were hit or miss from Windmill Point south due to huge areas of red tide coming down the Rappahannock and affecting the waters out beyond R1 and south to Gwynn Island and the Hole-in the Wall.

No citations this week.

Tight Lines,
Jerry

Capt. Jorj Head has been burning up the cobia. He came by my house last night, after another successful trip. His charter had caught 15 cobia. They elected to keep their first 3 (5 would have been the limit) and proceeded to tag and release the next 12 fish (largest was 62 inches). The day before, his charter caught 14 cobia. Jorj says that he has never seen the cobia fishing this goo in the Chesapeake Bay. He brought his camera for me to look at. He had about 800 photos on that thing, half of them out of focus. He is a fish catching machine but we need to work on his camera. I think he must have had fish slime on the lense.

Our offshore trip last week ended up with a Grand Slam after Guy Harvey and John Graves identified one of our white marlin as a roundscale spearfish from the photographs. This past weekend, we did it again. It was the same type of slam. Roger Burnley caught his first blue marlin. Smaller than our last one but he caught it on a TLD 30. His 200-pound fish was about all he wanted on that rig. Wes Blow caught his first ever marlin (white). I caught our second spearfish in a week. It was my first. Having seen a couple now, there is no mistaking these things. Lit up marlin and sailfish are beautiful. These spearfish positively glow. The roundscale has very distinct scales. The close up of the spearfish head is actually of Hunter Southall’s fish from last weekend. It shows the scales well. We brought my fish into the boat. The anal vent of the spearfish is well forward of the anal fin. In the white marlin, the distance is about 2 inches. To round out the weekend, Richie Moore caught his first billfish (white). We all went swimming back at the dock. A Grand Slam was not enough for my crew. We stopped at the South Tower on the way in for some amberjack action. We did catch some small dolphin for dinner this week. Last week, we were just south of the Norfolk Canyon. This weekend, we were down at the Triple 0s. Both weekends, we were between 50 and 100 fathoms. For some information about the roundscale spearfish: https://healthygrinsportfishing.com/?page_id=310

Dave Boyce with a personal best, 11 pound 7 ounce fish caught with Capt. Craig Paige last week.

Capt. Jerry Thrash

Queens Creek Outfitters

Patriot Charters

804-725-3889

www.queenscreek.com

Jerry@queenscreek.com

Fishing Report 8.9.10

Flounder cooperated for anglers fishing in the Mathews Boys and Girls Club two day flounder tournament. 20 boats fished Saturday and 12 on Sunday. The tournament was won by Carol K. Tomlinson of Mathews, who landed on Saturday a fine 7 lbs, 5 oz, 26.5″ fish and won both the ladies and biggest fish categories. Congratulations Carol! Husband Ricky also placed in the tournament with a smaller fish caught on Sunday. Their fish were caught at Cape Charles. We registered two other citation flounder this weekend, one from Cape Charles and one from Buoy 42. These are the first citation floiunder we have seen since May 22d so things are picking up!

The croaker bite is focused in the Buoy 42 area and over to Buoy 40A. Spot averaging 1/2 lbs. are being caught off Gwynn Island, Butlers Hole and the Spike.

Spanish Maceral were caught in big numbers this weekend trolling Clark spoons or small Drone spoons at 6-8 Kts vicinity of Windmill Point bar south to R-2 and to Buoy 41A.

Cobia are still biting at York Spit and at Newpoint Light.

River fishermen continue to catch a mixed bag of spot, croaker, sea mullet and small flounder.

Small and medium spadefish have recently been caught at the Cell.

CITATIONS:

Flounder, 7 lbs., 5 oz, 26.5″ caught 8/7 at Cape Charles on squid and minnow by Carol K. Tomlinson of Mathews.

Flounder, 7 lbs., 8 oz, 26.25″ caught Buoy 42 on squid by Thagard (Bucky) Dean of Sandston. Shown are Bucky on left and brother David on right with his fish which just missed citation size.

Flounder, 7 lbs., 14 oz, 26.75″ caught 8/8 at Cape Charles on cut bait by Gregory B. Thayer of Gloucester.

Sean Murphy of Mathews (left) and Caleb Temple of Gloucester brought these two nice 45″ and 43″ cobia in on 8/8 for a picture. The fish were caught on eel and Menhaden at York Spit.

Tight Lines,
Jerry

Brandon Bartlett cruised the bay today. They saw a bunch of cobia. They caught 10. Yesterday, he had a charter. They caught a bunch of amberjack at the South Tower. They then went offshore and pulled off a sailfish.