Fletcher Fishing

posted by John on Jul 16

Anyone who does not believe that a Bluefin Tuna is a powerful fish has never attempted to catch one on light tackle. We cruised all over the place and at 9:50AM we found crashing tuna. It is a sight to behold when a 6-7′ fish launches itself completely out of the water. We saw a huge school of tuna chasing bluefish. One cast into the fray and …….. off to the races. The rod is a Carrot Stix 5’8″ Extra extra heavy jigging rod. The reel is a Shimano Saragossa 18000F. The rod and reel performed well. We worked this fish for about 30 minutes and we had leader out of the water, but the fish ran and ran, and ran right into a lobster pot zone. Nothing we could do to get it away from the pots, then it brilliantly got tangled in a pot buoy and it is really hard to get braid untangled from the bouy line when a fish is on. We tried and failed.

We went back and found a different school farther from the lobster pots. This time we went…….. off to the races again! This rod was a Shimano Trevala TC4f XXH jigging rod, rated to 200lb braid, we only use 80lb. The reel was a Fin-Nor 7500 offshore (I think we melted the drag discs, it was smoking hot). This rig did not perform well. We fought the fish for an hour, Stephen and I had to spell each other. We believed this fish was going to be our yearly trophy fish, until the rod snapped and the top part began a slide towards the fish. In tag team fashion Stephen and I were able to retrieve most of the line and the top part of the pole by hand lining the fish (yes with gloves) and using the pointy end of the boat to cut distance to the fish. It almost worked, we saw color on top about 20 feet from the boat. The last and final run snapped the line on the broken rod.

After the heartbreak, we messed around with the big blues that the tuna were munching. We boated a bunch and headed in.

posted by John on Jun 24

I checked about 6 places on the way to where I found a mother load of 36-42″ fish. I launched at an hour after sunrise. The ride out was peaceful with a light rain. The water laid down after the blow overnight and early AM.

On my way to the mother load, I was able to catch a fish at each location. While they were keepers, they were smaller than the mother load. I took all of them with poppers and the magic swimmer. My bet is that there were bigger bass down below, but my surface fun only attracted the smaller ones. A location that I refer to as “Damien’s Pride and Mike’s Shame” held the smallest bass. “Last Night’s Starfish” was also productive, bigger bass, so the move north was called for. A new flag was flown on a buoy, so I have a new location, “Pitching and Catching”. The bass were slightly bigger. I decided here to try some jigs and drop to the bottom, got fish, but not much bigger, up to 32″. The other three spots have no names, so UDL will have to do. Same size, about 32″.

I allowed the drift to carry the boat and found the mother load in deeper water. 40-60 feet of water with fish throughout the water column. The sebile swimmer was producing bass. I hit about 6 bass with it. It is a surface swimmer. The fish were about 36″, they felt bigger than the others. On the last bass, the swallow caused a major bleeder, so dinner tonight would be striped bass. I continued casting the swimmer, and got no bass to take it, even though I could feel and see them nailing the lure. To catch fish on any lure you have to have a hook. I retired it.

The other surface lures produced nice fish. I switched to jigging with a sluggo. I used Nor-Easter’s technique and blam, the big fish were down on the bottom. Cast it out to the other side of the school, let it sink, then wait some more, and then a slow retrieve with a couple light twitches to keep it near the bottom. Big bass each cast after I moved back to the school. One cast per drift, as the speed was now 1.5 knots. Here are the two best pictures

This guy was swimming in midair, snapping on my thumb.

If I grabbed him, he flipped out. When I didn’t touch him, he just lied there. So this is the pic. The first was the biggest.

Then the bite just died. The mother load was still there, but I could not get them to bite, I finally looked behind me and took these pics. At least I knew why the fish got lockjaw.

10 seals killed the bite.

All in all a fun morning.

posted by John on Jun 22

After being too specific earlier, I was fishing on the saltwater today and yesterday.

I caught a bunch of fish, five good keepers, two that I would have argued if MEP stopped me, and about 15 non keepers. I caught them on different lures, jigs and plugs. The biggest was about 34″, caught on a sebile magic swimmer during a feeding blitz with jumping bait and bass. I don’t have a picture of the blitz that keeps the spots anonymous. Here are the pics of the best fish.

The water was throwing a bad roll with the waves, so the grab on these pics was tough. I wanted to get the fish back in the water ASAP.