Sorry for the late report guys, just transferred the photos from Chris’s camera.
Day one, we had Chris (Hot’s field tester), Ilya and Will with Captain Josh of Outermost Angling.
Left the dock at 0430am and by 0500am, we saw birds crashing in a distance, Josh gunned his 26ft Regulator towards commotion and we were greeted by a pod of tunas, what a sight! Woohoo! This is what we came for!! Stickbaits started flying towards the feeding tunas but none came tight.
Left and started to look for another school, birds were crashing again and in no time we were once again casting and working our plugs, I had one missed the lure by a foot, Will who was beside me all this while had a big boy jumped on his plug only to miss it and came back for a second try 5 yards from the boat!
ZZZzzzz the tuna took Will’s Carpenter lure and made an explosive run. This is Will’s first trip to the Cape tuna casting and was he in for a surprise, 10mins later Will asked for assistance, I took over Will’s spanking brand new Race Point, gave the drag knob a nice twist and brought the fish to leader in less than 10 minutes, asked Will if he was ready to finish the job, he replied “isn’t this the hardest part when the fish is right under the boat?”
I was like uhh…yes… I than ask Chris if he would like to have a little fun and he too grabbed the rod only to have the fish dived down under, Chris expertly tamed the fish up and had it back to leader. By now, Will was ready and we gave him the rod, he fought the fish alongside the boat, Ilya was ready with the gaff and Josh was leadering the fish in, what seemed to be a 70 odd inch fish taped out at 80 inch! Fish was measured from the upper jaw to the fork of the tail with a 52 inch girth! Total time taken ~25 minutes. Congratulations to Will on one hell of a fine fish and first time at that! Rest of the day was pretty slow with the occasional rolls every here and there, whales were everywhere by the hundreds feeding, goes to show just how much bait there is right now.
Day 2
Frustrating as it is, well that is why we call it fishing and not catching…
Chris and Ilya are the only two left with me in the frontline for the 2nd day.
We had a slow start in the early morning with very scattered feeds. Josh later received a call from Captain Dom and we were chugging 30 miles to the spot as soon as they hung up. Tunas were crashing everywhere but none wanted our plugs, had a boil right beside my living dead lure and Chris came tight on a Hot’s stickbait. Tightened up his drag and brought the 63 incher beside the boat in less than 10mins, unfortunately we had to let this one go after a few shots from the camera. We found another pod and started casting, Moutoukenmaru was my choice of lure this time and after 2 twitch I was slammed by a submarine, ripped 2/3 of line in less than 15secs, Josh was screaming “should we chase it down?!!” and I went “nope, stay” after 10minutes of fighting the fish made another tearing run and popped my 150lb leader… after reeling in 200yards of line I stuck my rod in the rod holder. Ilya who was beside me, tried pulling the line out from the reel and said, “how much drag do you have on this thing??!” Chris did the same and smiled,”35-40lbs and with the spool down to a third I don’t know”.
Ilya was next to get tight on the Moutoukenmaru 23F-Super Magnum when we encountered another school, yes they were everywhere! But escaped after 10 seconds of orgasm.
The fishes we encountered were feeding on some small baits 2-3 inches long with big silvery scales, maybe the Captains can enlighten us on the species, we were using lures up to 8 inch, if you can’t match the size, at least match the color!
To the crew I was fishing with and Captain Josh on both days, “THANK YOU VERY MUCH”!
Had a blast with you guys and will definitely do it again.
Tackle used,
Rods
MC Works SM 778 prototype
Race Point 250
Race Point 200
Hot’s Tide Lez 72H
Reels
Stella 18000s
Lures
Burns living dead
Carpenter
Moutokenmaru lures
Hot’s
Shimano Ocea pencil
Cheers,
Paul.
FISH!!
