"How do you get blood out of…"

I love that window of time immediately after an intense fishing trip when the fish stories are too fresh to re-tell, your physical body is beat-up and achy, and your mental capacity resembles the spinning wheel of a resetting iPhone. Those few hours after you’ve cleaned up but before you’ve slept, when you’re coming down from the high of fishing, and you're wrapping your head around your deep affinity for an endeavor that seems to keep costing more money, and occasionally puts stress on your health, safety, and personal relationships.

I'm convinced that much of the great fishing-related literature was written during these periods immediately upon return to shore, because the author just wanted to be left alone with their thoughts and remind themselves–through the aches and exhaustion– why it carries such meaning for them. I’m not a literary scholar, but I’d posit that Herman Melville first set pen to paper to tell the tale of Moby-Dick as an excuse to sit down for a while to recover from a post-voyage hangover, while Mrs. Melville stood in judgement and chirped that whaling was just an excuse for Herman to hangout with his friends and drink beer, and does this 'Aaron or Ahab or whatever his name is' guy even have a real job because he sounds like a bad influence. 

So when I got home on Saturday from my first overnighter to the Canyons on the Offshore Investment I cracked open another (entirely unnecessary) beer and tried to debrief myself before I fell asleep on the couch. In between Googling  "how to get blood out of [item of clothing]” enough times to show up on an NSA watch-list, I tried to jot down a bunch of notes from the trip while they were still fresh in my mind, but it would be a few days before I had the chance to write it all out...

Like most great fishing trips this one had come together a little-last-minute, but the weather looked like it was going to cooperate and I managed to have the weekend relatively free of conflicting commitments. Keith and Mark (Bates ’00) pick me up Thursday at 10pm for the trip to the Cape, after we had finished work, packed up, and had our hall-passes stamped for the weekend. All signs pointed to it being smooth-sailing to Falmouth given the time of day…so of course we immediately hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-93. Three lanes cut down to one so that three DOT guys could watch one DOT guy dig a hole. Nice teamwork boys.

We get in to Keith’s late, half-heartedly drink a beer and head to bed for an early start. Given that the last time I pushed-off on the OI had been after a night of heavy Carlo Rossi drinking, I was very up for a good night’s sleep before 30 hours on the boat. Keith managed to sleep for maybe 3 hours because he’s a goddamn fishing robot, while Mark and I have a snore-off until a giddy Keith wakes us up. Coffee is brewed, the assembly-line production of an unnecessary number of sandwiches-per-person is completed, and the boat is loaded up. 

One of the oft-referenced great parts of being a BFC alumnae is ending up meeting, through fishing, a bunch of other Bates alums from earlier and later years who you immediately get along with as though you've been friends for years. I had met Mark a few times before and instinctively liked him, but hadn’t fished with him until this weekend. It makes you wonder if the Bates Admissions Office has a quota to fill each year of gentlemen who like outdoor pursuits that involve staying up all night in unfavorable conditions, canned light beer, and coming home with all of their clothes in a trash bag. The BFC might not make the cover of Bates magazine or admissions pamphlets like the ski team, but goddamn do we have our own version of school pride.

The ride out is flat and sunny and we do our best to be ready if a helicopter flies overhead looking to film a Coors Light commercial. As we near the canyons, we exchange radio chatter with a variety of men who sound like they consider Jimmy Buffett a trusted lifestyle advisor, and speak with the thinly-veiled bravado of a Dos Equis commercial. It quickly becomes apparent that Keith not only holds his own in these conversations, but is considered a familiar and trusted source of intel by these other captains– some of whom he’s never met, their friendship built entirely over VHF radio. These men will henceforth be referred to as "Keith’s boyfriends” by Mark and me. Keith seems to find less humor in it than we do, fair enough.

There was a bluefin tournament going on, so much of the early radio chatter was other boats complaining about how their catching of yellowfin was preventing them from catching bluefin, which we equate to complaining about getting blow-jobs because you’re trying to get laid. After a quick stop to make casts into a few bait-balls with heavy bird activity we reach the edge of the Canyon and get our spread out. There are dolphins and whales everywhere we look, but they don't seem to have a Tuna entourage along with them.

Now, I know a very little bit about off-shore fishing, but I’m lucky enough to have friends who are great fisherman, and invite me along to make sarcastic comments, sandwiches, and power-moves on the radio (fish love R&B classics, just ask any marine biologist). So, without a strong understanding of how to rig a ballyhoo without it looking paraplegic, I focus on doing a lot of hosing off the deck, pointing out dolphins to people who are disinterested in seeing any more dolphins, and asking rhetorical questions about whether anyone else needs a beer. I know my role on the boat. 

So, after a few passes along the edge with no luck, I switch the Sirius over to a hardcore rap station that drops the N-word so frequently that 3 white guys are noticeably uncomfortable singing along, even though we’re many miles offshore and no-one is in earshot but a pod of dolphins. (Thanks to rapgenius.com I was able to track down not only the lyrics of one of the songs, but an incredible "translation" of an especially memorable line.)

Within 5-minutes of the radio change we’ve got a rod bent over. Clear the spread, I strap into a fighting belt, Keith and Mark glove-up, and boom, I’ve got my first-ever yellowfin on the boat.

And thus begins the great correlation/causation debate that surrounds fishing superstitions. Switch to rap and a rod bends? Stay on that channel for hours. Pour a little Crown Royal overboard and the bite starts up? Better keep that purple bag within arms-reach, Poseidon's thirsty. Did cracking that Coors Light call in another fish? Better have another one, wouldn’t want to jinx it. 

There’s a consistent line of weeds floating in the water, which wouldn't be a problem if we weren't dragging a giant leaf rake full of hooks behind us. But other than constantly de-weeding lines, the water looks good, we’ve got consistent dolphin and whale sightings (at this point even I’m sick of them), and the fish-finder is marking bait. The bite is sporadic, but we put another keeper Yellowfin on ice before the sun starts to set and layers of clothing start to go on for the night. 

Set up for the overnight drift for Swordfish, involving floating glowstick-filled balloons on the surface with squids bumping around in the depths under blinking LED discoballs. An eery look with green globes bobbing on the ocean under a star-filled sky, hypnotic even. So hypnotic I can feel my eyes start to close…I’ll just go up front and lie down on this bean-bag for a few minutes… 

Wake up about three hours later. Whoops. Did I miss anything? Apparently yes, Keith and Mark had picked up and moved the boat, at-speed, to another location and I slept through it, water crashing over the bow into my face and all. I guess that answers my earlier question of is it easy to sleep on the boat?

I’m half-awake as Keith and Mark sort through confusion and crossed lines with a swordfish hooked up beneath us. I offer literally nothing to the equation as my sleep-and-whisky-addled brain watches it transpire, and the fish is lost to Keith’s dismay. There had been talk of continuing a swordfish streak, which is a surefire way to curse yourself. I go back to check the beanbag for any damage and am out like a light within seconds, apparently I sleep really well on the OI waterbed.

As the sun starts to rise we swap gear, put the spread out, and switch back to the troll with the promise of a dawn-bite waking us up from the nighttime daze. Almost as soon as the sun is up, the bite turns on and we have multiple rounds with 2-5 rods going off at once as schools of yellowfin find our spread. A lot of small “rat” schoolies, but with some keepers mixed in. We put two gaffed fish on the deck at once during a full knock-down of, which means two fish bouncing around spraying blood in a manner that it looks like we tried to put them out of their misery with a hedge-trimmer. 

We’ve had 20+ on the line and have five 30-60lb yellowfin and a stocky Mahi Mahi in the icebox when the bite seems to turn off as quickly as it began. The weather report turns out to be inaccurate and with rolling seas and no promising reports coming over the radio we decide to pick up and head north, stopping to check a few lobster pot buoys for any circling Mahi but with no luck. Apart from a minor hit-and-run incident with an unidentified whale, the ride back home is relatively smooth. Or so Mark tells me, as I’ve fallen asleep again and Keith has nodded off for a few minutes (the man literally doesn’t sleep). 

We return to the Falmouth dock covered in a thick layer of crunchy salt, as though Poseidon himself shook-up the OI and rimmed it in kosher salt like a margarita. Hands as cramped and scrunched up as an arthritic grandma, covered in fish scales and what feels like hundreds of tiny cuts given a once-over with sandpaper. Sore in a bunch of muscles that you never know you had, but are apparently well-used when keeping your footing on a boat in rolling seas. 

"Tommy Boy Luggage"

Fish are processed on the dock, a discussion about the shotgun techniques for hunting seagulls is given far more serious consideration than is warranted, and the boat is cleaned of its carnage. We fill two coolers and a Coors Light cooler bag with beautiful tuna steaks and mahi-mahi filets, dump the remaining melting, bloody ice on top, and throw everything in the car. All clothing from the trip is covered in salt and fish blood and is tossed into Tommy Boy luggage with the hope that it stays air-tight until it reaches the washing machine.

I get home and take one of the more satisfying showers of my life, realizing that I'm still swaying involuntarily from sea-legs and exhaustion. My fridge is packed full of sushi-quality tuna meat, my entire body aches, and I can feel my eyes starting to close again. My bed feels really nice, but I could sleep anywhere. 

When I wake up the next morning was I ready to do an overnighter offshore again? No, probably not. Am I ready to go again today? Absolutely. But first I gotta buy some Oxyclean and a vacuum sealer to finish cleaning up from this trip.

And another one bites the dust...

Since I began bluewater fishing in 2008 it has been a series of ups and downs. This year certainly had more of the latter than the former with bad weather and generally bad fishing. But on the last few trips things have really picked up on the old OI, with much more consistent action and lots of meat in the ice box.

Over the years we've had our share of successes, with just about every big game fish available in the Northeast gracing the OI at one time or another. The staples of yellowfin and mahi are frequent visitors to the fishbox. And lately there's been a strong surgence of our nightime billfish the sword.

And who could forget the 700 lb blue marlin in Veatches canyon in 2010. I certainly won't ever forget that fish.

 Even the elusive wahoo has made an appearance at the OI once or twice. Mmm he is tasty.

White marlin? Definate check....

 Bigeyes? You bet. Who could forget the double bigeye hookup in West Atlantis that made Clark Winchell and his First Mate Sleaveless Tee famous

Mako sharks? There have been a couple. Bluefin? God too many. Skipjacks? You better believe it!

But one species has continued to elude me. Odly enough, they aren't stereotypically all the difficult to catch. The Longfin Albacore. The Penguin. The Chicken of the Sea. Why have I never been able to put an albie on the deck? No idea. They are elusive. Or something like that.

Well Albie, today I cross you off the list. The penguin has landed. A few of his other buddies made it to the cooler as well.

The yellowfin tuna (and four more of his bretheren)

 The Wahoo (Of the four we hooked, he was the only one who failed to saw through the leader.)

And there you are Mr. Penguin, with your soft chunk white albacome meat. It took a while for us to finally meet, but you're welcome on board my boat any time.

2012 White Marlin Open

The Hard Four, at right, in the Marina. 

At some point earlier this year my buddy John Libre (Bates '02) calls and says there is a free spot on his brother-in-law's boat for some fishing tournament and do I want to go fishing in Maryland in August. I tell him I'm interested, but not sure I can make it work schedule-wise, and let me get back to him about it. He calls me again at the end of July to remind me that I never got back to him. So, I check the calendar, figure out how to make it work with the wife, and start to figure out how to get to Ocean City, Maryland. I'm thinking "awesome, I'm going fishing, I'll get to meet some new fishing buddies, and we'll probably have a cocktail or two."

About 1-week later I'm on a shuttle bus from the Philadelphia Airport to what appears to be the back parking lot of the Philadelphia Airport, but is actually the home of the tiny-ass plane that is taking me to Ocean City. My carry-on bag was almost too big to be checked on this plane. I thought they were going to check to see if the weight of the passengers was evenly distributed on each side of the aisle. On the final descent into Ocean City the pilot didn't say "flight attendants prepare for landing," he just turned over his shoulder and yelled "Elaine, sit down!"

John picks me up at the airport and I find two coozied can beers at my feet, and on the 45min drive to Ocean City I begin to realize that this is going to be some more serious fishing than I anticipated. Turns out we're in the 2012 White Marlin Open, the largest Marlin tournament in the world...something that John failed to mention previously. At this point I begin to remember him saying there was a cash prize, which I had in my head as $250,000. Turns out I was off by a 0. It was a $2,500,000 purse. Oh.

So here is the cast of characters that I meet upon my arrival at our condo at the marina:

John Libre - He significantly undersold this trip when he invited me.

Frank Coulson - Brother-in-law of John Libre, owner and captain of the 36' Contender "Hard Four," and all around great dude. I would alternately call him "Boss" all week.

John "Zoo" Andrae - real name John, but was a child model and got this nickname from Zoolander as a result. Obviously. He's the fishing captain out of New Jersey and to put it simply, knows how to fucking fish. He would want to murder us 14 times during the course of 3 days.

Todd Saylor - Frank's buddy from way back and college, who now lives in Cancun where he owns a bar and sells oceanfront lots. And yes, he is exactly as fun as you're thinking he probably is.

Chet - the fucking new guy who thought he was just going fishing.

So there are 250 boats vying for this $2.5million purse, and as the 36' center-console we are definitely on the smaller side. In the marina we're surrounded by 50'+ fishing boats of various ports of origin, with various fishing and/or sexual innuendo names, and teams of matching-shirt and matching beer-gut men. We're hearing about how hot the White Marlin bite has been the past few weeks, and at this point everyone is expecting there to be a lot of competition for top prize. 

Tuesday morning we're up and out of the marina by 4am, and motoring out towards Baltimore Canyon for about 4 hours, with the triple 300s blaring. Zoo is driving, we're all sacked out in the waterproof beanbags on the deck of the boat. These things are awesome, especially if you've been over-served the night before. We haven't been, yet, so it's just a nice treat to get a few more hours of sleep in. 

Lines go in at 8:30am and within minutes we hear other boats calling in releases. Long morning of nothing, and then Frank hooks into one a little after 1pm and fights it into the boat. We deck-check it, and it is under-size, so it goes back in. We have a few more hits throughout the day, but don't land anything else. I recall the ride back in being somewhat somber, but I was also passed back out in the beanbags for most of it. As we head under the drawbridge we run a single white marlin flag (upside down to indicate it was a release) up the outrigger. After we pull into the marina we start to look around and see that there are a couple boats with multiple flags, but quite a few of the big fishing yachts are flag-less…so we're doing above average.

Wednesday morning are we're discovering that Tuesday evening was a bad time to create a new bloody mary recipe, and a worse time to drink said recipe out of 24oz commemorative Slim Jim mugs. The beanbags were pleasant yesterday, necessary today. 8:30am and our lines are out again, and we're starting to look like a team…or at least we're not tripping over ourselves as much and Zoo seems to not be audibly sighing as much from the tuna tower. A little after 9am and a left outrigger explodes. Frank grabs it, and there's a nice white marlin on. Then our right-flat rod blows up as well, and I grab it. As Libre and Saylor clear the rest of the lines Frank's fish drops the hook, but mine is on. 

After what seemed like a much longer fight than it was, I'm sweating Tito's vodka and Old Bay seasoning and we've got another white marlin on the deck that is too short. Later that afternoon Frank adds another released white marlin to our tally, and we miss 7 hook-ups. Zoo is not pleased, nor should he be. We come in flying two upside-down flags. Same deal as Tuesday, there are a lot of boats flying 1 or 0 flags on the way in. As we pull into the dock we see a boat 5 slips down has some unexpected company: 6 US Marshals and another half-dozen Ocean City cops. Not good news. Rumors are flying on the dock, and while we never found out the exact details, the working title for this blog post was originally  "Don't register your $2 million dollar boat in a very public fishing tournament when you're wanted by US Marshalls for tax evasion, or you will be lead away in handcuffs from the dock and have your boat impounded in front of everyone." But that felt a little wordy. 

So after all that commotion, and after the Coast Guard has come and helped impound the boat, we find out that after the weigh-in that night there is only 1 White Marlin on the board, everything else has been under-weight. And as it stands then, that White Marlin will win $900,000. Now we know why Zoo is distraught, we were 1 good fish away from a big win. Fuck. I'm due to fly out too early the next day to go out fishing. Double fuck. I change my flight at dinner, there's a Million-Dollar fish out in dem waters.

Thursday morning starts with some action, but not the kind we're looking for. We hit a few schools of Tuna and Mahi Mahi and are trying to get our lines in before they can take all our bait. It strikes me that I would have been content catching these fish on the flight down, in fact on another day these hook-ups would have been considered a good day of fishing, but not today.  The afternoon gets hot, bulas are pulled over every inch of flesh possible to avoid the sun, and we keep trolling SW in chase of the 82 degree water that they've been hitting in. We've got an iPod on shuffle playing tunes on the boat, and "Dancing on the Ceiling" comes on. "White Marlin love Lionel Ritchie" Zoo deadpans from the tower. We get another white marlin to the boat. Undersized again. Fuck. But damn white marlin are fun to catch.

Libre,  Coulson, and Saylor with a fish that looks big enough to me.

We're hearing one boat over the radio that has released over 5. The 3:30pm lines-out deadline creeps up on us. It is a different kind of end-of-day. Usually it is a sunset or a trip departure that calls it, this time it is a call over the radio saying lines-out. The somber mood while de-rigging fades quickly as the disappointment over not being in the money fades to the realization that we got into a good number of fish and had a hell of a time doing so. The music is turned up, man-hugs and high-fives are given, and coors lights downed in seconds.We get back to the dock and clean the boat. Not a lot of flags flying that day, but there's still one more day of the tournament (not for us, we'd already fished our 3 days). The lone White Marlin is still on the board, and worth a lot more money per pound than that fisherman first expected. 

Beers start going down pretty fast, showers are taken, and we head to "Seacrets" which Zoo tells us is the must-go destination in Ocean City. Now, Ocean City looks like a lot of kinda-sad seasonal destinations on the east coast, with a lot of half-functional neon, ferris wheels with questionable structural integrity, and mini-golf courses across the street from mini-golf courses. And a fucking "Sunsations" on every-other block selling beach crap. So, admittedly my expectations for this Jamaican-themed establishment weren't sky-high on the way there. Turns out this place is 5 acres, all covered in sand, with at least 6 different "scenes" ranging from restaurant, to in-the-ocean beach bar, to nightclub. There's a Rastafarian band lead by a fat white guy, and they are far better than that description sounds. There's also a Jamaican bobsled in the courtyard that we'd partake in, obviously. 

The next morning my tiny-ass flight out of Maryland is delayed and I check the White Marlin Open standings on my phone. We're in 93rd place overall out of 250 boats. Not bad. Oh, and the prize of that single White Marlin had gone up…to $1.4million. Not a bad week of fishing for that guy.

Here's a video that I put together. The song you may not know is "Knock, Knock" by Mac Miller, a 20-year-old white rapper out of Pittsburgh who is better than that description sounds.

Password is flounder

2012 White Marlin Open - Hard Four from Chet Clem on Vimeo.

Carolina Offshore

gear.
aj.
dolph.
weird.

Mahi Nation - Over the Edge

Deep Running - Tuna Trip 8/09

This is a video from a trip in the beginning of August 09. It took me a while to edit everything down from more than an hour of video.

Amarillo Steele

15 Miles South of the Vineyard

Southern Waters

Atlantis STEELE

Canyons III- Enter the Billfish

I think I figured out why Apple Blend Skoal so effectively catches fish while other blends do not. It’s the smell. For some reason, fish like the smell of apple blend. Perhaps it closely mimics the scent of some form of bait, or perhaps it’s just a random evolutionary quirk, but when several fisherman are enjoying a lip of apple skoal, and spitting into the sea, a skoal slick sets up behind the boat and fish are attracted to it. When trolling, this slick disseminates through the water column back over the trolled baits. The combination of scent and visual stimulus of the baits is too much for fish to resist. It’s science! But, I digress….

My apple blend skoal theory was put to the test again this week. Canyon Run III was a last minute decision on my part. The weather window opened up and I knew it would be my final opportunity to head south this season. Jon Pilcher, the Tuna Nut, asked me if I wanted to make the run south with him. I cleared it with my boss and went down to the Cape Tuesday night. Plan was to leave Wednesday morning for the Atlantis Canyon area. “Tell my wife I am trolling Atlantis, and I still have my hands on the wheel”. Billy Joel brought great honor to trolling Atlantis Canyon in his epic ballad, “The Downeaster Alexa”, and I was pretty pumped just to get out there. It would be Tuna Nut, this dude GW who I hadn't met, and me. A small crew of three making the big run south.

Recent fishing reports had been pretty solid. Over the weekend, a lot of boats took tuna on a temp break between Atlantis and West Atlantis canyons. Our plan was to fish that general area on the troll during the day and deep drift the canyons at night for swords. As we were leaving the dock, a guy Jon knew on the “Salty Dog” rolled into Falmouth Harbor after returning from the canyons. His report was not good at all. 1 mahi and nothing else. Totally dead, not even a real bite. Seas as rough as he had ever seen out there, etc. With that report, we looked over his budget 1980 Silverton, declared him an amateur and cast off the dock lines. Next stop the canyons.

Two hours later we rolled into blue water just north of Atlantis. Lines went in and we worked southeast along the shelf in the direction of Veaches Canyon. The water looked largely dead. No bird life to be seen, but there were dolphins moving around in different pods. We started working the high fliers and were able to pull decent mahi off roughly half the fliers we passed. We also stumbled upon the mother load of all dolphin in a crazy school. We pounded this school hoping to find yellowfin underneath but our efforts went without fortune. They were friendly creatures though. You could reach under the boat and touch them!
We continued southeast out of the mammal pods when we had our first billfish encounter. A white marlin revealed itself in the spread and began a slashing attack on the green machine spreader bar. For no less than 20 seconds the marlin attacked the bar as we watched and eagerly hoped it would eat the stinger baits. The marlin then disappeared for two seconds before coming up behind a jet head lure run down the middle of the spread. After speading 5 seconds attacking the jet head, the marlin disappeared. Thinking the show was over, we looked at each other with some disappointment. 10 seconds later, the far outside rigger which had an islander ballyhoo combo on it, got eaten. The white had taken the way way back bait. A short (and rather atypical) fight later, the marlin was in the boat. Unfortunately the marlin stayed down for the entire fight and didn’t jump like they usually do, but it was still cool to bring a billfish to the boat. We took a few photos of the release and back she went into the deep blue sea.




It was getting late and with darkness setting in at 630 these days we elected to run back west and set up over Atlantis for swords. By the time we had figured out the drift and positioned the boat, it was pitch black. Jon’s favorite type of fishing is sword fishing, and he is really an expert at rigging for and catching these fish. I learned a lot from watching how he rigged up and fished four sword baits. I look forward to greasing some swords next year using his techniques on the Edge. With lines at 200, 150, 100 and 75 feet below the surface, we drifted in 1500-2000 ft of water off the edge. Some hot burgers off the propane grill later and it was bed time. I laid down on the bow and Tuna Nut took first watch. I was just starting to fade off to sleep when a clicker ripped out three feet of line very quickly. Jon grabbed the rod and loosened the drag slightly. Then fish gave a long run off and Jon through the drag up to strike. It was on! We had hooked something legit. GW and I jumped into action and began clearing rods and setting Tuna Nut up in the harness. We fired up the engines so that we could position the boat as needed during the battle. The fish made some long tearing runs on the 50. At one point, it came up to the surface and we thought that we had lost it, only to come tight to it right under the boat. Then it dove again taking 150 yards of line right back to the bottom. This fish was a battler. Jon was getting worked over pretty good and gave me the rod to put some pressure on the fish. I was able to regain some line. I gave the rod back to Jon, I like to think after breaking the fish’s spirit, and he brought it closer to the boat while GW and I grabbed the gaffs. At roughly an hour after the bite, I slammed a gaff into the fishes head and it was game over!

This fish was a monster sword. 110 inches long to the end of the bill, 80 inches from the bottom jaw to the tail fork. Estimated 250+ pounds. A true canyon monster of the deep. It was awesome.

We got the lines back in and had a second hookup around 4 AM. This fish was smaller than the first, and we pulled the hook after 5 minutes. As the sun came up, we discussed options and elected not to troll for tuna based on the amount of fish we had to process. We decided to head straight back to the dock. The seas cooperated and we were back in Falmouth at 10 AM.

For me this was just another solid hookup in a season that has seen many. I am done for the year. I am now shifting my focus to a different sort of hook up, the kind that is available all year round. To all you BFC heroes out there, both near and far, give me a ring when you’re in Boston and we can head to the local watering hole and tell some fishing stories.

-The Captain

Edge-Water

"The Edge." It refers to the edge of the continental shelf, an area highly revered amonst New England offshore fisherman. At The Edge, the gulf stream water, cobalt blue and 75 plus degrees, smacks into the greener inshore waters greating defined breaks i temperture and water clarity. Tropical gamefish such as yellowfin tuna, albacore, bigeye, and blue and white marlin patrol the edge, feeding on squid, skipjack and frigate mackeral. With the bermuda high pressure system providing calm waters through the week, it was time to for the edgewater to live up to its namesake. Canyon time baby.


Based on recent intel, the plan was to run to Fish Tails Canyon to fish a 75 to 80 degree temp break. Our buddy boat for the trip would be the Tuna Nut out of Great Pond, a 33 Hydrasports Center Console. Captain Alan from Chatham would come and would provide safety equipment including an epirb and a life raft. The boat was readied with close to 300 pounds of ice, multiple rods, ballyhoo, chunk bait, squid baits for swords, spinning rods, and basically anything one would need to tangle with gamefish of the tropics. We left the mouth of waquoit bay at 150PM for the run southwest past gay head and to the Tails.

From the corner of the vineyard, the run to the Tails is 87 miles and even at our 36 mph cruise it felt painfully long. We arrived at 515 and deployed our spread of ballyhoo behind islanders and small spreader bars. A call to the Tuna Nut was positive. They had boated a white marlin. Unfortunately they hadn't seen much in the way of tuna. We worked our way southwest along the canyon edge and into deeper water. From a distance, we saw a few yellowfin bust and vectored the boat in teir direction.


The yellowfin and the bluefin are far different creatured as far as feeding paterns are concerned. The bluefin feeds much like a dolphin. Schools of bluefin will keep baitpiled up and individula fish will take turns feeding. With yellowfins, feeding is a free for all. They absolutely pile onto a spread and as a result multiple hookups are quite common. Savy canyon fisherman keep the boat in gear following the intial round of hookups so that other fish have an opportunity to take the baits. We were trolling nine lines when we passed by the first school. 8 lines got hit, five stayed down. It was complete chaos and our crew of three could only do so much to handle the agressive and powerful yellofin. We were able to bring 3 to the boat between 25 and 60 pounds. A good start to the trip.


We vectored Tuna Nut to the south and he also got into the action. These flurrys of hookups were repeated for us three times that evening and we ended the night with a good clutch of yellowfin tuna in the fish box. Small yellowfin were released while tuna over 40 pounds were kept.

The decision was made to move north towards the head of the canyon and drift south through the mouth of the canyon overnight fishing for swords. We continued to troll north along the western canyon wall. It was just about complete darkness when the outrigger clips snapped and three rods in the spread went down. My initial thought was Bigeye, the monster tuna of the canyons that feeds only at dusk and dawn. As one of the tiagras continued to dump 400 yards of line, my suspicions were confirmed. We had at least one bigeye on the line.

The bigeye is a nocturnal tuna that feeds on squid. As the squid head up to the surface during the evening the bigeyes head up in pursuit. It is for this reason that bigeyes are most vulnerable to anglers at dusk.

One rod came unbuttoned so we were down to two fish. I fought my fish to the boat where my father gaffed it. This would turn out to be the largest yellowfin of the trip, a nice fat beast of 85 plus pounds. Unfortunately No picture would be taken that night as out attention turned to the other fish that was still taking line. We backed down on the fish, put the boat in nuetural and began to gain line back. Alan fought the fish from the rod hold and after about a half an hour, we were back onto the monfilament. The fish then sounded and the next fifteen minutes went by with little line gained. After 45 minutes of back and forth, suddenly slack. The hook had pulled. We were dissapointed but still thrilled that we had the opportunity to battle this creature. As Billy Joel says in "The Downeaster Alexa"- "There are giants out there in the canyons..."


We settled in for the night drift. Two sword baits were deployed at roughly 200 and 300 feet down respectively. I chunked for a little while before giving up to enjoy the stillness of a canyon night. The sword baits were hit twice by inquisitive fish but not solid hookup came from either event. I ate a sandwich and read a copy of Big Game Fishing the Magazine while my dad and Alan slept. The night proved uneventful.





The morning troll took us back towards our yellowfin from the previous night and again these fish did not dissapoint. We boated another 6 fish before I elected to try something a little different. I rigged a ballyhoo onto my spinning rod and ran this bait off the flat line. Sure enough, it wasn't long before I was tight to a feisty yellowfin on the spinning gear. Unfortunately two crossed lines would end the fight early, but there was no lack of yellowfin action on this morning.






By about 730, we decided it might be appropriate to switch gears. We headed north to the highflier field just off the edge and onto the continental shelf. There we teased up mahi mahi using small baits and boatted several for the grill. I decided that since I happened to have a fly rod on board, I might as well hook one up on the long pole. The happy mahi were very agreeable to a fly rod presentation.




So in summary, a great intial canyon trip with 15 yellowfin landed, twice as many hooked, boat loads of mahi and a bigeye animal that was so close and yet so far. Now, I'm off to clean the boat...