Copied from Tim Towers report from June 8th:
It was a crazy day of fishing. Wherever we fished in the morning, bluefin tuna were there. We never did see any on the surface but the sounding machine was filled with them all day. Indeed the first decent fish we hooked into was a tuna. Don Prior (MA) had it on for about five minutes before it parted the line at the fly knot above the jig. The cod fishing was very good after the tuna loss. And it really looked like it was going to be an excellent cod day. But right in the heat of catching cod (with me running around marking, weighing and sorting fish), we got our second tuna on. We had three totes of mixed cod and pollock (mostly cod) at the time.
Theo Russell (MA) hooked the bluefin and the fight was on. For an hour and a half, Theo and his father, Tad Russell, fought the fish together. And fight it they did. A better job couldn't have been had. They came with great chemistry but they worked very well together as a team. But the time spent fighting a fish that hard smoked them both. I took over. I fought the fish for forty-five minutes. For the whole time, it was thirty feet down but wouldn't come up and (with some minor exceptions) wouldn't go off on a run. It just circled the boat with the leader knot mostly just in the reel! I wasn't that tired but I wasn't getting anywhere either so Tim Belisle (MA) took over. At the same time, I worked the boat running the engine to help. But it wasn't my help that really worked. Tim was great. He got the fish to run and come to the surface. We had some close calls on gaffing but no cigar. Tim's worked lasted a half hour or more. Then Tad took over again, alone. The best fight of the day too. Tad fought it for forty-five minutes and brought it to gaff. Ian Keniston got it in the tail with the gaff but the gaff pulled out, leaving a big white exposed place in the tail up near the third yellow finlet. This fish was 300 to 400 pounds, a very long thin racer much like the fish we used to harpoon early in the season (in the old days). Ian took over for a while after the reel broke! The dog must have disintegrated in the reel as the handle would go backwards easier than it would go forward! This made it just about impossible to fight. Ian held the fish at fifteen feet for twenty minutes while I stood there looking down at a fish I could have harpooned a hundred times! Ian had it on the short track so the leader was in no danger of getting caught in the rudder. But we couldn't get it close enough to gaff. Rowland Mortensen (NJ) grabbed the rod next. After five minutes of fighting the reel with no dog and a fish that would not come to the surface, the line broke. Off it swam into the wild blue!
We picked up all the pieces and moved back to the area where we had been fishing before. The fish had taken us to the east for three and a half hours and three miles. About a half a mile from where we had started fishing, I ran over a school of pollock. Figuring that this was as good a place as any, I stopped the boat and everyone went back to groundfishing. Two minutes later, Jim Phelon (MA) hooked up with another tuna. At this point, I could have cared less about another long tuna chase. So I told everyone to keep fishing. And fishing they did! Every once and a while someone would have to pass a rod over or around Jim's as he fought his tuna but mostly it seemed like business as usual. The tuna spent a lot of time well away from the boat on the surface. But one thing this tuna did that the previous one didn't was make screaming runs to the boat and then back out again. It would come at the boat so fast that for a minute or two it looked like Jim had lost the fish and was just reeling in slack line. Then the rod would bend and off the fish would go again! Finally, after the fish got close to the boat again and turned to make that mad dash out, it got tail wrapped. Ian yelled; "He's gaining line; the fish is coming to the boat". I wasn't as fast as Bryan Lewer and Ian. Both had gaffs. But I did get there just as the tail showed and Ian sunk his gaff it. The water flew but Ian had hauled the tail right out of the water and the fish was beating Ian with the gaff. Bryan sunk his gaff in. "We're going to lose it", Bryan said. I grabbed Bryan's gaff with Bryan and said; "This fish is coming in". And in it came, landing on top of me and then between the bench seats and the rail. It hammered it's tail on the deck. When it was through, it had worn the skin off the side that was laying on the deck.
Jim's fish now replaces Dave Henderson's (MA) 158.5 pound bluefin as the third largest bluefin that has ever been caught on the Bunny Clark with conventional groundfish rod & reel tackle.
We had to weigh the fish in pieces because I didn't have a scale big enough. After ten body sections were weighed it came in at 176.5 pounds, the third largest bluefin that has ever been caught with a cod rod on the Bunny Clark. The one we lost earlier would been the biggest or, certainly, the longest.
The day got better after that with a lot of big pollock, our first few hake of the year, our third biggest cod and a wave of dogfish the likes of which we haven't seen yet this year. Most legal fish landed were pollock followed by cod, almost an equal number of both. Legal landings also included one haddock, one cusk, nine white hake, a mud hake and many dogfish from little tiny whips to full grown females. We drift fished all day. Jigs caught the most fish.
Edited by tbob55 (June 17, 2010 10:54 AM)
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It was a crazy day of fishing. Wherever we fished in the morning, bluefin tuna were there. We never did see any on the surface but the sounding machine was filled with them all day. Indeed the first decent fish we hooked into was a tuna. Don Prior (MA) had it on for about five minutes before it parted the line at the fly knot above the jig. The cod fishing was very good after the tuna loss. And it really looked like it was going to be an excellent cod day. But right in the heat of catching cod (with me running around marking, weighing and sorting fish), we got our second tuna on. We had three totes of mixed cod and pollock (mostly cod) at the time.
Theo Russell (MA) hooked the bluefin and the fight was on. For an hour and a half, Theo and his father, Tad Russell, fought the fish together. And fight it they did. A better job couldn't have been had. They came with great chemistry but they worked very well together as a team. But the time spent fighting a fish that hard smoked them both. I took over. I fought the fish for forty-five minutes. For the whole time, it was thirty feet down but wouldn't come up and (with some minor exceptions) wouldn't go off on a run. It just circled the boat with the leader knot mostly just in the reel! I wasn't that tired but I wasn't getting anywhere either so Tim Belisle (MA) took over. At the same time, I worked the boat running the engine to help. But it wasn't my help that really worked. Tim was great. He got the fish to run and come to the surface. We had some close calls on gaffing but no cigar. Tim's worked lasted a half hour or more. Then Tad took over again, alone. The best fight of the day too. Tad fought it for forty-five minutes and brought it to gaff. Ian Keniston got it in the tail with the gaff but the gaff pulled out, leaving a big white exposed place in the tail up near the third yellow finlet. This fish was 300 to 400 pounds, a very long thin racer much like the fish we used to harpoon early in the season (in the old days). Ian took over for a while after the reel broke! The dog must have disintegrated in the reel as the handle would go backwards easier than it would go forward! This made it just about impossible to fight. Ian held the fish at fifteen feet for twenty minutes while I stood there looking down at a fish I could have harpooned a hundred times! Ian had it on the short track so the leader was in no danger of getting caught in the rudder. But we couldn't get it close enough to gaff. Rowland Mortensen (NJ) grabbed the rod next. After five minutes of fighting the reel with no dog and a fish that would not come to the surface, the line broke. Off it swam into the wild blue!
We picked up all the pieces and moved back to the area where we had been fishing before. The fish had taken us to the east for three and a half hours and three miles. About a half a mile from where we had started fishing, I ran over a school of pollock. Figuring that this was as good a place as any, I stopped the boat and everyone went back to groundfishing. Two minutes later, Jim Phelon (MA) hooked up with another tuna. At this point, I could have cared less about another long tuna chase. So I told everyone to keep fishing. And fishing they did! Every once and a while someone would have to pass a rod over or around Jim's as he fought his tuna but mostly it seemed like business as usual. The tuna spent a lot of time well away from the boat on the surface. But one thing this tuna did that the previous one didn't was make screaming runs to the boat and then back out again. It would come at the boat so fast that for a minute or two it looked like Jim had lost the fish and was just reeling in slack line. Then the rod would bend and off the fish would go again! Finally, after the fish got close to the boat again and turned to make that mad dash out, it got tail wrapped. Ian yelled; "He's gaining line; the fish is coming to the boat". I wasn't as fast as Bryan Lewer and Ian. Both had gaffs. But I did get there just as the tail showed and Ian sunk his gaff it. The water flew but Ian had hauled the tail right out of the water and the fish was beating Ian with the gaff. Bryan sunk his gaff in. "We're going to lose it", Bryan said. I grabbed Bryan's gaff with Bryan and said; "This fish is coming in". And in it came, landing on top of me and then between the bench seats and the rail. It hammered it's tail on the deck. When it was through, it had worn the skin off the side that was laying on the deck.
Jim's fish now replaces Dave Henderson's (MA) 158.5 pound bluefin as the third largest bluefin that has ever been caught on the Bunny Clark with conventional groundfish rod & reel tackle.
We had to weigh the fish in pieces because I didn't have a scale big enough. After ten body sections were weighed it came in at 176.5 pounds, the third largest bluefin that has ever been caught with a cod rod on the Bunny Clark. The one we lost earlier would been the biggest or, certainly, the longest.
The day got better after that with a lot of big pollock, our first few hake of the year, our third biggest cod and a wave of dogfish the likes of which we haven't seen yet this year. Most legal fish landed were pollock followed by cod, almost an equal number of both. Legal landings also included one haddock, one cusk, nine white hake, a mud hake and many dogfish from little tiny whips to full grown females. We drift fished all day. Jigs caught the most fish.
Edited by tbob55 (June 17, 2010 10:54 AM)
Top