I had one of the finest tuna bites that I encounter so far this year, the reason for this statement as we caught fish on the jig and on popping gear.
I had the pleasure to fish side by side with Tony & Bret Baker, Brian and Michael.
We headed out of Hatteras on the Godspeed and made it to the 70 miles limit,
As soon we arrived to the fishing ground we saw most of the guys already hooked up, dropped some jigs and did not take a long time before Brian hooked up, fought the fish and get it to boat side after 10 to 15 minutes, it was a 70lb blue fin tuna with a lot of energy, we decided to release the fish and waited to gaff a bigger one,
Things start to die down but most of the troller’s are still catching fish,
Decided to put the jigging set up aside and give a shot with the casting rod,
All what it took is 2 twitch to see a monster shadow behind my lure and the captain screaming big fish, the boil that the fish created on the lure put me into shock but still manage to set the hook, fought the fish to the boat side after 50 minutes and made the call for the gaff,
The fish measured 70 inch x 50 inch and hit the scale of 207 lb.
During the fight Tony decided to throw stick bait and get inhaled right away and that put Bret on fire, he managed to grab my Tokara and it didn’t take much to had a strike and fish on, 3 guys fighting with no tangles and no problem, every body is doing the right thing, Tony manage to land his fish estimated at 130lb while Bret lost the fish due to pulled hook, from the fight I knew that Bret’s fish is big and it a shame not to have the chance to see it, but that is fishing and now he has a reason to come back,
After that we came in tight on the jig and landed 2 other fish in the 130lb to 150lb,
After all we went 5 out 7 and the captain made the call to head back at 12:30 pm as the weather start to change and Mother Nature has no mercy,
Looking forward to do it again!

             Sami.

       

Hatteras Mar 11th

Evan, Ilya, Milton, Aydan, Mike and myself headed out with the Tuna Duck in Hatteras, NC on Thursday. Although lately we all have hopes of landing double digit bluefin in this area, catching one quality bluefin can really make the day too.
Although we initially went to the Hatteras area the captain quickly realized the fish had all moved closer to Oregon Inlet so we chugged over there.
Ilya hooked the first BFT of the day using his Fisherman Spinoza 5120. He was really horsing the fish in despite what appeared to be a relatively large tuna. Ilya was using high drag and at one point when he was picking up some slack the tuna dove under the boat and everyone was shocked to hear a loud "PING" and looked over to see that the rod had snapped. So the first BFT would live to see another day.
We all continued to Jig but soon Tuna were busting all around the boat. In a flash, jigs came out of the water and topwater lures were flying through the sky. After a few lures hit the water, Evan came tight using an Ocea Pencil and began what would be a long fight.
While Evan fought, everyone else continued to jig and Mike also came tight with a BFT; double hookup! Mike made short work of the tuna and soon had what was probably a 60-70 pound BFT in the boat. We now had the age old dilemma: do we take the bird in hand or wait for the two in the bush? We decided to let the smaller bluefin go in hopes of landing what appeared to be a much larger BFT still battling in the water below.
After about 30 grueling minutes Evan realized that this tuna was in the for long haul and passed the rod. Over the course of the next hour, everyone helped out in landing what ended up being a 71" tuna; close to a 200 lb (weighed in at 195 at the dock after bleeding).
After the trophy BFT was landed, the action died down and no more tuna were hooked despite vigorous jigging. But at least everyone had their turn to fight a big tuna that day.
We did catch a couple of albacores too.
All in all, a really fun day despite only landing two bluefins (I guess that shows how spoiled we are that we lament over only landing ONLY TWO tuna :b)
Here are the pics: