Well, those Wahoo sure did turn on this week! We had a blast. After Hurricane Bill, we fished with John McCadden. John has been fishing all over the world, looking for a Blue Marlin for 14 years. As of last Sunday he was 0 for 15. Understandably, John wanted his Marlin so bad he could taste it. As he read the fishing reports about the seaweed making trolling difficult, he emailed with his concerns about being able to have another crack at his Marlin. Well, I am happy to say that John got one. It was a nice one too – about 650 pounds. Congratulations John! Now that is perseverance. 1 for 16, but I bet you will remember the “1″.
Wednesday we had the McDermott family out. They set the year’s Wahoo record, catching 36 Wahoo for the day. Well done to all of you – were your shoulders sore the next day?
Saturday we had the girls from Teachers Rugby Club out for their annual tournament. We had a pile of women on the boat on a day where it was a mite choppy. Despite some queasy stomachs, the girls managed to catch 9 Wahoo and are looking good for winning the tournament. All of this was achieved with Super Dave in the cockpit. He was a blur down there…downriggers, baits, gaff shots…a real super hero.We averaged 6 to 9 wahoo a day for the week. It is obvious that we have switched out of August mode and, as I said a couple of weeks ago, September fishing is FUN. I can’t wait.
Until Hurricane Bill gave us a near miss with big seas and a fair amount of wind we were having fun fishing in that August weather. The Jaxtimer family, long time friends, came to visit this week and we were able to put together a great few days with Wahoo, Blue Marlin and lots of sun and fun. Terry Jaxtimer was kind enough to provide all of the pictures for this week’s report – thanks, the pics are great!
As you can see, the Wahoos are here in Bermuda. You can see lots of them in the chum and on the depthsounder. They are here and they are going to start biting well soon.
I suspect that Hurricane Bill will turn out to be a bonus for fishing as it rolled the water over enough to drop the water temperature and change over from our August pattern to the Spetember pattern. The big Tunas are gone, but the schoolies ought to show back up, the Wahoo both on live and dead bait will start to bite. Check out the article I wrote for Sport Fishing Magazine about some of the unique ways we fish for Wahoo in Bermuda. Finally, the Marlin will hang in there enough to provide excitement.
Making predictions in our business is normally a bad idea. I think that I will stop guessing and start fishing. Next Sunday I will let you know how it turned out.
Greetings from the Pacific Northwest. We have some big news that could not wait.
Margo Doyle, the matriarch of Black & Blue Fishing Club, managed to catch and release a 55 pound King (Chinook) Salmon yesterday after a two hour and fifty minute fight.
Margo released the fish as large Kings are almost always females carrying millions of eggs back to the stream of her birth. The fight was long and the excitement at Langara Island Lodge in beautiful British Columbia was high with more than 7 boats watching Margo fight the fish after radio chatter alerted the Lodge boats of the special fight.
At a calculated 55 pounds the fish was the largest caught at the Lodge this season.
Whoa! Too much for one report so we are going to do two this week. Had a pretty good week this week. The Blue Marlin bite is hanging in there and you tend to get a shot or two a day. Friday Colin Barnes got four shots and caught two.
Depending on your personal preference, what might be more exciting is to talk about those big Yellowfin Tunas that I mentioned last week. They are here. While the numbers of fish in the schools are not as big as one might hope, with a little luck and a lot of concentration and patience you can get one or two. The way fishing for these bigger tunas works is you drag baits – beg enough ones to entice Blue Marlin close to the boat and smaller ones further back on the riggers. Way back. Spectra helps a bunch when your baits are so far back there.
You put the boat in 100 – 500 fathoms off the Bank and wait for the school to come up and crash baits. Sunday they were eating these little things we call “redfish”, Saturday they were eating flying squid. Whatever the bait of the day is, when the Tuna drive it to the surface and they are feeding you have to have your baits in the school quickly because they tend not to stay on the surface for long. These Tuna are big for Bermuda – all over 100 pounds. When you get a bite (we got a triple on Thursday) it is a case of hang on and hope for the best! These fish pull hard and fight for a long time. A really rewarding catch for the angler. Gets me all fired up just talking about it.
Our AON trip were the big winners this week catching two of the three big Tuna hooked (one was lost right at the boat – hard luck!). The fish were 120 pounds and 180 pounds. That is a lot of cassarole or sushi or tuna steaks.
Earlier in the week we caught a frisky Blue with Bruce Dilke. What he lacked in size, he compensated for by the jumps. Danny Forchic came fishing for a couple of days with two friends and they both got a Blue Marlin.Congratulations guys!Just as an aside, Danny might have missed his calling.He loves to fish and ski but check out his form with that tag stick…I think the javelin might have been his real calling.
Check out the footage below.
So, for the week a few Blue Marlin, two big Tunas a smattering of Wahoo and Skipjack Tunas. It is August…the seas are flat and full of life. Makes it fun to go out every day wondering what we are going to see today. As I dated this fishing report, I realized that September fast approaches. September is a very interesting month in Bermuda. It is a little cooler, the seas tend to stay flat but the water temperature changes just enough to make it the only month where you can catch every species Bermuda has to offer. Sittting here thinking about what is available in September I come up with the following list:
Blue Marlin
Wahoo on dead bait
the occasional Dolphin
Yellowfin Tuna
HUGE Tiger Sharks
Wahoo on live bait
Barracuda
Amberjack
Little Tunny
Skipjack Tuna
Blackfin Tuna…you get the idea.
I hate being ashore during September with all that stuff out there to catch. Call and book a trip!
The weed has gone back to wherever it came from, letting the fleet have a reasonable chance at trolling for Marlin again. The bite is pretty good and seems to be improving slowly. MAKO was able to convince seven of those Blues to eat this week. We released three of them.
Woody's Marlin
We had Guy Harvey and his son and daughter (and a film crew) on board for a couple of days this week. Guy wanted to catch a Tiger Shark and Blue Marlin. I have to say I was getting a little nervous on the Marlin front, but we were able to pull it out at the end and Master Harvey caught a 200 pound Blue. This release was a little unusual as it involved Guy and his daughter jumping in to film the fish! I am sure we will all get to see that footage when Guy’s project is completed.
If you think that is interesting, young Master Harvey also hooked, fought and landed an 800 pound Tiger Shark. Again, at the release, the Harveys were overboard filming. I know he is the expert, but the Marlin filming didn’t make me as nervous and the Tiger Shark filming did.
In other news, AON ran a trip on Thursday and we caught a couple of Wahoo. We went 1 for 3 yesterday and 1 for 2 on Friday.
The tuna are much harder to find this week. They took the Robins (speedos) with them wherever they went. It is a more typical August now…Marlin and Tiger Shark fishing are the main activities, at least until the guys find the next hot spot for chumming the Tuna. I thought things were going to get real interesting when there were a couple of sightings of bigger Tuna, part of the near-annual run of larger Yellowfin Tuna (over 100 pounds) that Bermuda enjoys. They are also hiding now. I sure hope they show up this year.
I was checking the footage on the hand held video camera and we got a great clip of Karen Sealock catching her Blue Marlin back in the Blast tournament. I also found the slow motion feature on the video processing software so you are all going to have to put up with my overuse of the feature until the novelty wears off.
I spoke about the weed situation last week. It is no better. It is making trolling very difficult. We have been spending most of our time on the Tuna instead. We have had some really great days. The medium size Tuna are being very cooperative this year. One day last week, in an attempt to combat the weed we put marlin lures on the downriggers to try and keep them below the worst of the weed. We got a little dolphin, but it didn’t work on Mr. Marlin that day.
The weather sure seems to have settled into normal August weather – hot and calm. These calm days are great for kids. We had a trip last week where a couple of kids kept themselves busy all day with the Ocean Robins (Speedos), tuna, barracuda and Mackerel (Little Tunny). It is a nice change to see someone get so excited about catching half a Speedo because she couldn’t reel faster than the barracuda could swim.
We will be out quite a bit this week with no holidays to interrupt us. Let’s hope I have lots of fish stories for Sunday.
It never fails. The tournaments over, Colin Barnes went out on the Indigo Blue and it took him 20 minutes to get a bite from a fish he figured would have made the minimum 500 pound weight had it been a day earlier. MAKO took Sunday off but we were out on Monday and had similar action. We went 1 for 4 for the day. That included a doubleheader of blues each over 500. They both came loose, but it sure was fun for a while.
I gave Mate Peter Lewis kudos a few weeks back for pitching a Blue on a big lure so it is only fair that I relate a story from this week that went the other way. We had a fish come up in the spread that was hot. It went after my bridge teaser very aggressively and I felt confident we would get a bite out of her. Peter had the pitch bait rod ready and dropped back to just before the second wave so that when the teaser disappeared and the fish turned, she would see the pitch. All went well except the fish did not seem at all sure about that pitch lure. In fact, after following the pitch for what seemed like a minute, she cut over and ate the short right lure – which was covered, covered, covered in weed. So much for that pitch attempt. At least we got a bite!
The weed is really, really bad on both banks. So bad that trolling is awfully difficult. Normally, the weed starts coming in in September and gets really bad by December. Who knows why this year is so much earlier – but we all wish it would go away. If you are trolling 5 or 6 lines, it feels like half of them are covered in weed at any one time. Later this week the Sea Toy and Challenger went down North of the island and found some relief from the weed. As I recall, they both got a fish up there; Challenger might have caught two.
While the weed is the bad news, the Yellowfin Tuna remain the good news. On the outside edge of Argus you can see them on the surface in pretty good numbers. A good class of fish too, 50 to 100 pounders. Live Robins fished deep seems to be the best way to get a bite. It sure is fun fishing and those Tuna can PULL!
Most of our firends on the visiting boats have made their trip home or will do so this week, we wish them all safe trips. It was great to have you here. It’s going to feel empty out there for a while.
I got an email from my friend and Black and Blue member Mike Sandusky that said the bite is on off Hatteras. They had great weather this week so I look forward to hearing all the stories out of the Outer Banks.
The pictures were kind of sparse this week. We will do better next week. Talk to you next Sunday.
So ends the tournament season in Bermuda. MAKO managed a 9th place finish. Not great, but not terrible. Congratulations to Bree, the big winner!
Our Sea Horse tournament was a challenge. The first day we went 0 for 4 on whites. The second day, “everyone’s favorite redneck”, Todd Holleman put on a one man show catching a White and then a Blue. We managed to catch a lot of the activity on the boat cameras. Look up by the time and date to see that Blue put on a show on top. The third day was quiet again, I think we missed two bites, on a white and one a suspected Blue. We had a big fish come up on the shotgun – at first, I thought the shadow was a Manta Ray – that is how big it was. As is so often the case, this big fish PILED on the shotgun with water splashing everywhere and a huge hole in the water and…..missed the darn lure completely. Ah well, next time.
Just before the tournament the tide (current) switched and is now running into the East. As the bait and fish adjust to this new tide it will take a little scouting to find out where they are living now. It will be interesting to see if the Tuna, which have been great this year, set up again in such good numbers. They tend to get scarce around mid-July, but every year is different.
Sunday. The rest day after the Bermuda Big Game Classic. Dan Jacobs and his team pulled off another great one – thanks to all of you.
I am pretty sure that Bree won the tournament. We will know for sure tonight at the awards banquet.
MAKO had a tough tournament, releasing a Blue in three days of fishing. We missed two bites on the first day and one sneaky White Marlin attack on the third day. Things were quiet for us, but we could have done better. That is what suckers you into going out and doing it next year!
There is one more tournament in Bermuda next week…the Sea Horse Anglers Club. We are looking forward to that.
Finally, the wind has died down. The last day of the Classic was nice and it is really nice today. Let’s hope it holds.
Tuna fishing remains hot on the North side of both banks. I am not aware of anyone who tried tuna fishing on the North side of the Island, but that might pay off too. MAKO’s calendar for the rest of the summer is looking pretty good, so with the right weather we ought to be able to provide some pretty regular advice as to conditions.
Bermuda
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Fishing Reports
Well, those Wahoo sure did turn on this week! We had a blast. After Hurricane Bill, we fished with John McCadden. John has been fishing all over the world, looking for a Blue Marlin for 14 years. As of last Sunday he was 0 for 15. Understandably, John wanted his Marlin so bad he could taste it. As he read the fishing reports about the seaweed making trolling difficult, he emailed with his concerns about being able to have another crack at his Marlin. Well, I am happy to say that John got one. It was a nice one too – about 650 pounds. Congratulations John! Now that is perseverance. 1 for 16, but I bet you will remember the “1″.
