Big Eye Tuna, Wilmington Canyon August 2015

For the past 3 years I’ve been watching the Big Eye tuna trolling bites that develops in the canyon during mid-August to late September and always wanted to be part of it.

 To find the captain who will give us the confidence was not of an easy task especially that our dedication and aim was to catch them on the jig and on topwater.

Captain Michael visited the shop in early 2015 and after chatting with him we put up a plan to target those fish when the time arise. As I was monitoring that jig bite I was sure that the time is right especially after seeing couple of successful attempts from friends that resulted with great results.

My companion on this trip was Captain Josh from New Zealand, Thomas from Jersey and Dan and Clint from Delaware; we met in Cape May at noon and off to the Wilmington Canyon.

After the run of 70 miles in 3 hours we reached our destination and we got greeted by pilot whales in the general area, exactly what we were looking for.

The screen started lighting up with big red marks and Captain Michael asked us to drop our jigs. After couple of drifts and right on the front of my eyes I saw Dan’s rod tip bouncing initiating of a strike on his jig. I shouted at him to set the hook and after 3 attempts from the fish Dan was tight!

Gladly and surprisingly Dan landed that fish solo estimated around the 160lb to 170lb, the fish was landed on a Synit rod and an original Deep Liner jig.

We were at the start of our trip and things we’re looking good. You cannot ask for anything better when you get the first fish of the trip on your first hour and while jigging.

The night was about to fall when things began to get more interesting and we started seeing those mark climbing on the fish finder. We dropped a jig and Thomas got tight on the Shout Stay.
It took the fish a good 10 minutes to realize it was hooked - a typical demon fish behavior that put all the rest of the species in a different perspective.

Thomas gave all what he could and fought it for close to 1 hour till he asked me to take over; from my experience the fish behaved and acted like a champion and she gave us a hell of a fight.

We got it close to colors 4 times and on every attempt to horse here she took off and settled in 70 to 80 feet down, I guess she found her comfort zone.

In about 1 hour and 45 minutes and while I was fighting the fish the line snapped leaving us with big disappointment on our faces. The fish of this size that managed to fight us like that and with that kind of stamina deserved to live. Somehow I was happy and disappointed at the same time. It was part of the game and the name of it is the love of fishing.

We had that window at dusk and heard of some fish caught on the troll but since we were already fighting that fish our opportunity to get a multiple hook up got narrower and narrower. That was due to the duration of the fight, we learned heaps on this trip and we will be back at it and to aim to get better results…

Tackle used:
Rod: Synit, OBX-400, OBX-500
Reel: Shimano Stella 2008 and 2013 model
Line: Power Pro Hollow, Unitika, Sunline
Jigs: Deep Liner, CB One, Shout Stay, Shout Shab Shab

   Tight lines

     Sami