{"id":5668,"date":"2014-11-15T12:40:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T19:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthygrinsportfishing.com\/?page_id=5668"},"modified":"2014-11-15T12:40:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-15T19:40:28","slug":"virginia-beach-bluefin-tuna-fishing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/healthygrinsportfishing.com\/?page_id=5668","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Beach Bluefin Tuna Fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virginia Beach Bluefin Tuna Fishing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Virginia anglers look for bruiser bluefin to return this winter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Ric Burnley<\/p>\n

published in Sport Fishing Magazine: www.sportfishingmag.com\/species\/fish-species\/virginia-beach-bluefin-tuna-fishing?image=169204<\/a><\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-02\"<\/a>Three winters ago, on a cold December morning, Capt. Pat Foster was slow-trolling for striped bass off the Virginia Beach oceanfront when he got a big bite. \u201cThe fish hit hard,\u201d he recalls, \u201cthen it just stopped.\u201d At first Foster thought he had a trophy rockfish, until the line started screaming off the reel.<\/p>\n

Before he could clear the other rods and turn the boat, all of the line on Foster\u2019s Penn 113H Senator was gone, and with it, his fish. Foster scratched his head, wondered with awe what had stolen his tackle, and then went back to rockfishing.<\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-03\"<\/a>A few miles away, Ken Neill was trolling for stripers in his 31-foot Albemarle, Healthy Grin, when he got a big bite too. \u201cIt didn\u2019t last long,\u201d Neill chuckles. \u201cThe fish took everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the next few hours, the VHF radio crackled with chaotic reports of other skippers facing similar encounters. \u201cGuys were getting spooled, burned off, crossed up, even losing rods and reels to mystery bites,\u201d Neill remembers.<\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-04\"<\/a>Back at the dock, stories of close encounters with large bluefin tuna<\/a><\/strong> trickled in. \u201cOne guy told me, \u2018All I had left was a memory,\u2019\u201d Foster laughs. At the time, fishing regulations prohibited capturing one of these beasts, so Foster continued to focus his efforts on striped bass. \u201cThe next day we fought a bluefin for an hour and a half on striper tackle before releasing it,\u201d Foster recalls. \u201cObviously something was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

When bluefin season reopened a few days later, Foster and Neill returned to the striper grounds loaded for bear. \u201cI was ready to make those fish pay,\u201d Neill jokes. And pay they did.<\/p>\n

Bluefin Bonanza<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-05\"<\/a>Bluefin tuna are no stranger to the Virginia coast. In late spring and late fall, the fish swing past the Commonwealth on their migration between New England and Cape Hatteras. \u201cThey can show up anywhere from Chesapeake Light Tower to the Fingers, about 20 to 50 miles offshore,\u201d Neill says.<\/p>\n

But when these bluefins showed up in the middle of winter, they were swimming within sight of the beach. \u201cWe were catching fish in 38-degree water right outside the inlet,\u201d Neill shakes his head. \u201cI\u2019d never seen anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While anglers fishing for striped bass have caught bluefin before, those stories are rare. No one could have imagined a reliable run of 100- to 300-pound bluefin tuna within sight of Virginia Beach\u2019s resort hotels.<\/p>\n

In fact, during the early part of 2012, anglers caught big bluefin from the North Carolina state line to Virginia\u2019s Eastern Shore \u00ad\u00ad\u2014 most within a few miles of the beach. Foster says this presented a conundrum: How do you fish for bluefin tuna and striped bass at the same time? The answer is a hybrid mixture of tuna gear and rockfish tactics that produced amazing results and unbelievable catches.<\/p>\n

Loaded for Bear<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-06\"<\/a>Virginia anglers like Foster and Neill are experts at scoring big bluefin. \u201cDuring spring and fall, we usually troll horse ballyhoo on Ilander skirts with 80-pound outfits,\u201d Neill says. Due to the explosive power of a large bluefin, Neill\u2019s crew limits their spread to three baits fished way back behind the boat. \u201cWe run one bait 150 to 200 feet behind a downrigger, about 25 to 40 feet down,\u201d he says, \u201cand the outrigger baits are out half to a third of the line on the reel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neill trolls his rigs at 5 to 7 knots over the humps and hills that dot the bottom from Triangle Wrecks east to Norfolk Canyon, and from Cigar off North Carolina up the coast to Lumpy Bottom out of Wachapreague.<\/p>\n

But these spring and fall tricks didn\u2019t work on the unprecedented run of winter bluefin. \u201cThe water was cold and the fish were feeding on menhaden,\u201d Neill says. \u201cWe had to use different tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster and Neill are also experts at catching striped bass in winter. \u201cWhen the striper show up around Thanksgiving,\u201d Foster says, \u201cwe troll tandem parachute rigs at 2 to 3 knots.\u201d A parachute jig is a big bucktail rigged with an 8- to 12-inch rubber shad. The nylon hair on the jig is tied in reverse so it bulges out around the lead-head, which gives the parachute its name.<\/p>\n

Most anglers fish two parachute jigs from each rod. This tandem rig starts with a 250-pound-test three-way swivel. From one eye of the swivel, Foster pulls a heavy jig on a 6-foot dropper. From the other eye of the three-way, he runs 12 feet of leader and a lighter jig. \u201cWe use 64-ounce and 12-ounce tandems up to 8-ounce and 4-ounce,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the bluefin showed up, so many anglers were hooking them on striper gear, it made sense to use striper lures for tuna,\u201d Foster says.<\/p>\n

To beef up his striper gear for bluefin, Foster rigged his parachute jigs on 80-pound tackle. \u201cI used a single parachute crimped to 30-foot leader of 200-pound-test monofilament,\u201d he says. A 380-pound-test wind-on swivel connected the 200-pound leader to a 300-yard top shot of 100-pound monofilament. The leader was attached to a reel full of 150-pound braid with a double-loop connection.<\/p>\n

When he targets winter bluefin, Foster pulls only a half-dozen lines. His spread starts in the transom with two rods bouncing 64-ounce parachutes across the bottom. He runs a 40-ounce parachute from each short rigger and pulls 28-ounce parachutes from the outriggers. \u201cThe rule of thumb is to drop the parachute back until it hits bottom, then put the reel in gear,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I worried that the parachutes wouldn\u2019t hold up to the bluefin,\u201d Foster admits. \u201cOr maybe the heavy lead jig head would pull the hook out of the fish\u2019s mouth.\u201d But he says his fears were unfounded. \u201cI don\u2019t think we lost a single fish because of the parachutes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

When the bluefin showed, weekend warrior Neill lost all interest in striped bass. \u201cWith 300-pound tuna swimming a few miles off the beach,\u201d Neill laughs, \u201cit was hard to think of anything else.\u201d Neill concocts a mixture of striper and tuna lures to cover the bases. On the flat lines, he uses a tandem parachute rig with a 64-ounce jig on the dropper, and an Ilander and big ballyhoo on the longer leader. \u201cWe use the biggest three-way swivel we can find and replace the 100-pound leader with 200-pound mono,\u201d he says. He pulls a 10-ounce and 5-ounce parachute combo from one short rigger, and a 6-ounce and 3-ounce tandem from the other. Each long rigger drags an Ilander and horse ballyhoo. \u201cWe hook fish on everything,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most important thing is to use tackle heavy enough to handle these big fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trolling speed for tuna is typically 5 to 6 knots, but Neill and Foster slow-troll at 2 to 4 knots. \u201cThat allows the parachutes to bounce off the bottom in 25 to 60 feet, where we get most of our bites,\u201d Neill says. \u201cThe Ilanders seem to work just fine at slow speeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glory Hunting<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"beach-bluefin-07\"<\/a>Each winter, hordes of anglers invade Virginia Beach to chase the schools of big rockfish returning to Chesapeake Bay. When the bluefin tuna appeared, hundreds of anglers were already on the water fishing for striper.<\/p>\n

In that situation, \u201cthe biggest challenge to catching one of these tuna is getting the fish out of the crowd of boats,\u201d Foster says. Many anglers lost fish to cut lines and crossed tempers. \u201cWhen I would target tuna,\u201d he adds, \u201cI would try to find the fish away from the fleet.\u201d That usually meant hitting lumps and hills outside 3 miles from the beach where striper fishing is prohibited.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook for diving gannets and breaching whales, or keep an eye out for bait marks on the fish finder,\u201d Neill adds. Foster found bluefin tuna feeding under small terns that were picking anchovies and sand eels off the surface.<\/p>\n

Hot spots included the deep water off Cape Henry and the lumps from Damn Neck south to the 4A Drydock off Corolla, North Carolina. Boats that ran north, and fished the sloughs and ridges within sight of Cape Charles Light also found bluefin mixed in with striped bass.<\/p>\n

Both skippers agree that the best time to catch bluefin is just before dawn and just after sunset. \u201cBut these fish will feed all day,\u201d Neill says, \u201cespecially if it is overcast or rough.\u201d And many anglers reported bites at the change of the tide. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to put together a scenario for these fish,\u201d Neill admits. \u201cWe just don\u2019t catch enough of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, in a dozen trips Neill landed only a handful of tuna, and released several more at the boat. Foster landed 10 tuna total and released twice as many. A year later, both skippers and hundreds of other anglers waited impatiently for the tuna to return. \u201cEveryone wondered whether the run was a freak thing or a regular event,\u201d Neill says. So when the first bluefin were caught this past winter, anglers breathed a sigh of relief and took up the chase again. \u201cLast year the fish were caught farther offshore around Chesapeake Light Tower,\u201d Foster says. \u201cThat made it easier to target them without worrying about striped bass.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what about this year? \u201cMy fingers are crossed,\u201d Neill says. \u201cI can\u2019t wait for winter!\u201d<\/p>\n

Bizarre Bluefin<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Virginia Beach anglers were shocked to see bluefin tuna in the middle of winter, marine biologists weren\u2019t. \u201cIf we\u2019ve learned anything over the past 20 years working on Atlantic bluefin tuna,\u201d says Molly Lutcavage, a research scientist at the University of Massachusetts, \u201cit\u2019s that they shift their dispersal routes over the years and decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the 1950s to \u201970s, fishermen sight-fished for massive bluefin tuna off the Bahamas, in an area known as Tuna Alley. The narrow region of Great Bahama Bank that runs north from South Cat Cay was legendary for its schools that traveled in crystal-clear water over sandy bottom. Today, the Bahamas\u2019 bluefin fishery is just a shadow of its past.<\/p>\n

Lutcavage points to the awesome run of bluefin off Hatteras in the late \u201990s. Then that bite slowed, and the fish were caught in other locations, such as Virginia, she says. Now it seems that the tuna are moving into Virginia Beach on their way to the Gulf of Mexico. \u201cThey swing inshore to top off their lipid reserves,\u201d Lutcavage explains.<\/p>\n

As for the cold winter water, Lutcavage isn\u2019t surprised. \u201cBluefin are warmblooded,\u201d she says. \u201cThey have been recorded in water as cold as 32 degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the big question is: Will the fish return this year?<\/p>\n

Rules and Regulations<\/strong><\/p>\n