The weather was as advertised -- Randall, one of the passengers on the New Lo-An Friday, remarked it was the best of all his summer trips -- but owner/operator Markus Medak remarked the water temperature had dipped 1 1/2 degrees from when the fish was good before the wind kicked up over the weekend and blew itself out Wednesday.
The sun got up just about the time the moon set with no bluefin around the boat. A boat found a school in the same area Thursday afternoon, but on this Friday morning an extensive search about 50 miles out found a bunch of marlin, a swordfish, sunfish in all sizes, fin whales and dolphin, but no schools of tuna to mar the only slightly textured ocean surface.
Literally the only highlights of the morning and mid-day were a marlin hookup on 20-pound by Ray that resulted in a dozen greyhound leaps by a fat striper and chef Christophe's breakfast burritos with chorizo and bacon and cheeseburgers with a spicy thousand island. That and the eco-tourism, but none of the 29 anglers was aboard to join Greenpeace.
Markus had already started on an exploratory course back towards the beach when the call came from JJ Gerritsen on the Apollo that they had finally found a school of bluefin.
When we got in the same vicinity as the Apollo, they were on the drift with a plunker bite when our skipper picked up the school well ahead of our bow. They were moving fast, but he intercepted a good chunk of the fish and they started boiling up around the boat. They just didn't bite worth a darn.
I took the skippers advice and fished the smallest sardines I could find in the tank on 20-pound with 25-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon and got the first bluefin on the boat. The fish kept boiling and I hooked another and handed the rod to Ireland's Aidan O'Loan, fishing with friend Tyler Kelly, who got to work to land his first tuna ever, a yellowfin. Walt got a bluefin on the long soak, Matthew Pinder got another on a handoff from deckhand Christina Innerhofer, and the jackpot went to Grant Hohman for his bluefin. And that was it, even though the fish boiled around the boat for most of an hour.
As it was we stayed late and didn't get to the dock until 9:30.
A bunch of boats were headed out as we headed in, so there will some good coverage today (it's 12:10 a.m. Saturday as I write this). Medak is back out there as you read this. "We need the water to warm up a bit (to 68 from 66.5) and to really clean up. There's just too much food in the water we fished today. Hopefully the warm weather helps.