2012 TUNA trips

[Birdsnest]

Birdsnest, I guess for albies there's no need for a rubber bungee on the handlines?? What type of leader do you run from the tuna cord to the clone??
When using handlines in mexico, the lines without some sort of a shock absorber lost fish.

I use 200 lb test. But I think I try some 150 for a while. I use the blue scotty snubbers on the short hand lines but I do not think they are necessary. They have the snap on the end of them that I use to fasten them to the boat. It is nice to have the snaps to untangle an un-cross lines while fishing.

 

[Birdsnest]

How did those outrigger splash boats work for you two, Sculpin and Fishtofino?

 

[seadna]

Sounds like a good time was had on the Canadian side for albies. I did my albie run yesterday (Sunday) out of Neah Bay. Ran SW from Tatoosh around 55 miles on the south side of Juan de Fuca Canyon. Water temps were warm inside (around 61F from 5-30 miles out and then got cooler for 5-10 miles. After that the water warmed up to about 63F and got gin clear. Once we saw of school of jumpers, we stopped and started trolling. Picked up 5-6 fish all on one at a time trolls. Ran west another 8 miles in the hopes of finding more/more willing fish and got skunked for the next 2 hours. Picked up and ran back in to the place we were catching them earlier and picked up another 5-6. The later afternoon bite was a bit better but it was still all one at a time. Wound up with 11 fish out of 12 hookups. Most were high quality fish in the 20-25lb range but we had 2-3 peanuts tossed in. All fish were caught within 1-2 miles of 47 48.21 and 125 27.65.

 

[Falcon]

Maybe a stupid question, but what do you do with 300lbs of tuna? Sell it commercially? Reason I ask is because I've been watching that show "Wicked Tuna" on National Geo, one of those 1000lb tuna is worth upwords of 15 grand!!

 

[Birdsnest]

Maybe a stupid question, but what do you do with 300lbs of tuna? Sell it commercially? Reason I ask is because I've been watching that show "Wicked Tuna" on National Geo, one of those 1000lb tuna is worth upwards of 15 grand!!

It is my understanding that it is illegal to sell or barter sport caught fish so i do not sell it. It is alot of fish but the recovery on one tuna is less than 50%. Albacore is far less valuable than bluefin or yellow fin as well. you can buy a tuna loin in our coop for 8$. Commies sell whole tuna at the dock for $20.
I have been fishing with a fella from Hawaii and there all anyone has to do is get a license for $50 and you can sell your tuna. He says alot of guys do it to help afford having a boat in the water.
I process my fish and give share it with my family and friends. I'm not even a big fish eater but I do eat it.

 

[TunaDon]

Finished business I did get them on black/purple jets probually because switched to that color whne they hit. I think slivo was same on mex flag which i also started with half the spread on. got some there to. If guys are starting out with gear i think 2 colors are all that is needed.

 

[Birdsnest]

So I alway struggle with cleaning tuna so today I watched some videos about it and found this guy that does it in a way that isolates the belly meat for special uses. His video was in highspeed with do dialoge. At about my 16th tuna I had a good grasp on what I was doing so I timed myself. I did one in under 4 minutes. So I thought that I better record this method some how for me to review next year and me being me I made a video. Unfortunatly I mixed the audio pourly and I mumble in the video so you can not always hear what I am saying. I think you will get the idea what is going on.
Is anyone doing anything simmular to this?
Am I missing anything?

This was by far my best batch of tuna with thourough cooling and better bleading.


[URL] http://youtu.be/0M7HlT-1tqU[/URL]

 

[Sculpin]

Wicked Weekend!!!!

I just want to start with thanking all the great people out there that have helped me and others along this road to tuna addiction. Totally awesome people that are willing to help out and share idea's and information. Thank you Shawn, Jay, Andrew, and all the others that have posted on various forums.

Saturday was great meeting Harper44 at Ukee and following him out. It was rough to say the least but not the roughest I have been out in. 2 plus hours of it does a number on your internal organs! I was sore all weekend and seeing a 12000 lb boat totally out of the water in front of you is pretty cool lol. I talked with birdsnest the night before and he said the number one goal was just making it out there. We hit that goal then decided to set two more. Second goal was to just hook up which we did and a double header to boot. We slowed the boat down too much and tried gaffing them but lost both. The third one we said screw it and just grabbed the leader and flung it into the boat (our new technique for now on). We went 1 for 3 on Saturday and Harper44 boated 11 I believe. We chalked up this day as our practice run for Sunday lol.

It was my first time out there with my own boat and we were the smallest in the fleet. I won't lie that I was nervous on Saturday but we did it and my gal came through with flying colours. I was so worried about the boat and the safety gear etc. I didn't have all the fishing gear ready and we wasted about 40 minutes getting set up. Now I am ready and have everything good to go. I had a green crew out with me but they came through eventually as well.

Here is a couple of shots from Saturday.

Harper44's sweet Carolina Classic "Reef Raider".

My boat has had many tuner's on her deck from the previous owner but this was the first one since I have owned her.

My buddy Marc managed the uno tuna for the day.

Nice scenery after fishing halibut on the way back home.

Continued.............

 

[Sculpin]

We all KONGED em!!!!

King Kong has nothing on the fleet of sporties that were out at Loudoun Canyon on Sunday Sept.2, 2012. A day to remember for sure.

We ended up late to the party due to the Ukee fuel dock changing hours that day. We took our time and were ready to go this day. All the gear was stationed and set for quick deployment. Smooth run out until the last few miles in the fishing zone.

Leaving Ukee in the morning. Smooth as silk.

Gear down and Marc's bro Dan watching the set up. We ran two hand lines and 4 rod's. We had two splash pin's in the prop wash as attractors as well. I have to thank birdsnest big time for the splash boats. DUDE they are awesome!!! our starboard boat caught 8 fish.

Hooked up on the make shift rod lol. We had a Penn bugger up on us on Saturday so we threw on a Shimano GT4000 on the Lamiglass 6'6" rod. That set up caught 2 fish.

We filled the half tote with salt ice to the top before the trip and I bought a Boone kill bag about a month ago and had it stashed in the bow. These soft sided kill bags are the cats azz. We ended up stuffing 10 in there with ice. The idea was to start filling the kill bag while taking ice out of the tote to make room for tuna to eventually make it to the tote. It all worked out pretty good.

Starting to fill the bag (we put a ***** load of ice in there right after).

We actually didn't have quite enough ice to cover all the fish in the tote. We ended up going straight to Ukee on the way in and the gas dock was out of salt ice but told us to go two doors down. We ended up at Neptune Ice and called the number on the building. The lady said someone will be right down. This is a commercial outfit and not set up for sport boats at their wharf but we tied up anyways and I climbed the ladder up to the wharf to meet the guys. They slung up a full tote of ice and lowered it down to the boat with the crane and topped up the tote and the bag. Totally awesome. I asked how much and the guy say's around 20 bucks and I said no way and gave him 40 so they could buy some beers that night.

Continued....

 

[Sculpin]

The comradery of the boats out there was second to none. It is probably the only way I will ever go tuna fishing with my own vessel again. It works that magic by spreading out and radioing info to one another. All the stars aligned in this spot this day. Thank you to all the other boats out there. I never talk on the radio and I was quite green on it out there that day. Thanks for putting up with me guys lol. Hope you liked the April Wine song.

We ended up going 18 for 20 on Sunday. Arrived late to the party and tried to catch up lol. What a blast. I am totally ruined now. Bankruptcy is the only cure. I was actually surprised by the fuel burn in my boat as we averaged 200 bucks a day on the two tuna trips this weekend. Pretty good me thinks!

Here are some shots of the fish laid out before transferring into the take home coolers.

A very tired captain but still able to give a thumbs up.

I headed straight to me regular fishing crew's house and we processed my share of the catch this evening. These are great guy's that I hunt and fish with all the time. It's too bad they couldn't make it this weekend. They sure appreciated the tuna loins I gave them and I sure appreciated their help.

Totally bagged. I can't even believe I made these post's. I am like a walking zombie right now. Hitting the sack for about 2 day's lol.

Cheers,
Sculpin

 

[Birdsnest]

Great Post. Thank for that and congratulations. Your boat sure did not look small out there. I think you looked just fine out there. And about that one splash boat that caught 8. I bet you were wondering why it was getting them so good. It often happens to me where one rig is getting them far better than all the rest but I can not find any reason why. There seems to be allot of no rhyme or reason when tuna fishing. On that day I could only get them way far back and on my really close rigs, not on the middle stuff. I just couldn,t figure out why. I caught my first two on green and eventually changed all my stuff to the best of green I could get with what I had. I talked to my buddy and he said he was getting them on everything. He did not even change his gear.
I wonder what some of the others were using that day?

 

[Finished Business]

Great read John, as always! Sounds like a pretty epic weekend and the Honda kept it pretty reasonable on fuel for you. I like how you brought the tuna to buddys house to be cleaned on the kitchen table! Must be a group of good ladz. Had a chuckle when I saw the GT4000 in the photo.

How far were the boats spread over the canyon? Did the group eventually hone in on one area more or less? And what tackle was working...very curious as to the finer details of this trip!

 

[seadna]

Birdnest - nice video on the tuna cleaning. I like that method and will have to give it a try. One thing I did see on another youtube video for tuna cleaning that might help is to use a razor knife for the shallow cuts. This serves two purposes - the razor knife can't go too deep since the blade is short AND you don't dull your fillet knife as much by going through the skin with it (the razor blades are quickly and easily replaced).

 

[Birdsnest]

Birdnest - nice video on the tuna cleaning. I like that method and will have to give it a try. One thing I did see on another youtube video for tuna cleaning that might help is to use a razor knife for the shallow cuts. This serves two purposes - the razor knife can't go too deep since the blade is short AND you don't dull your fillet knife as much by going through the skin with it (the razor blades are quickly and easily replaced).

Sweet! Thats a fantastic idea. Thanks for the feed back.

 

[Birdsnest]

I think its time for Tuna Fishing to have its own section in the forum instead of just 40 pages on one thread. hehe

 

[Falcon]

How big is your ship Sculpin? What is the average size to head out that far? Sorry I've got lots of questions as this type of fishing sounds like it's something I'd love to try one day.

 

[Slivo]

ok here we go. on the maiden voyage for tuna on Why Knot we went 33 for 43. kinda sad but when you only have 2 guys on the boat your bound to lose some, oh well thats fishing. istvan caught a 4-5 foot bule shark (i think) boy was that a cool looking fish. we were goin to stay out and drift but ran out of real estate for the tuna and ice. we used 8 mexi flag clone on rods and reels and one meat line with a rapala. we had multiple triples quads, quints and even a 6 banger. our fish were 22lb to 25lb average a few in 30s and a few 18 to 20. this day goes down as #1 in my book, I am TUNA Addicted. here r some pics, video to come later. the pic with the tuna underwater was from the next morning at the dock.

 

[Birdsnest]

Nice one silvo. Last year a buddy and me, just the 2 of us had 6 on at once(sextupleheader). It s kinda turns into like a fishing square dance where you are going around and over and under passing rods around. Hilarious.

 

[mikep]

What a great weekend on the water. It was very cool to see all the boat that made it offshore and got into fish! We did the trip both on saturday and sunday. On saturday we hit the louden canyon ad trolled for almost 2 hours for our first fish. It was rather spotty with the fish coming in 1's and 2's but we grinded it out and managed 31 for that day. We came in around 6 that night and the offshore just glassed right out....really cool. We were able to see lots of jumpers on the way in and chased some schools with the spinning rods and popping plugs. Its offical these tuna will smash a cast topwater lure if you get it near them.......that was amazing. second day out we were a little late leaving the dock and were on the grounds around 8, things started up pretty quick with a double. We joined the fleet and fished till about 1pm ending with 17. I was running a decent spread of gear with a mix of cedar pugs, clones and rapalas and I think we got about 80% of our fish on the diving plugs off the stern corners. I really like the mag 20's they are always great producers. We left and anchored up for halibut on the way back in and managed a couple of 45# fish and at 6pm called it a day. All in all a great weekend epecially with all the other boats out there. I am glad all of you guys are really getting into this its a great fishery. I will be back in tofino this coming weekend weather permitting and hopefully will do it all again! It was excellent seeing all of you guys out there and birdsnest you are hard core man, solo fishing for albies carzy stuff!

 

[Derby]

What a great weekend on the water. It was very cool to see all the boat that made it offshore and got into fish! We did the trip both on saturday and sunday. On saturday we hit the louden canyon ad trolled for almost 2 hours for our first fish. It was rather spotty with the fish coming in 1's and 2's but we grinded it out and managed 31 for that day. We came in around 6 that night and the offshore just glassed right out....really cool. We were able to see lots of jumpers on the way in and chased some schools with the spinning rods and popping plugs. Its offical these tuna will smash a cast topwater lure if you get it near them.......that was amazing. second day out we were a little late leaving the dock and were on the grounds around 8, things started up pretty quick with a double. We joined the fleet and fished till about 1pm ending with 17. I was running a decent spread of gear with a mix of cedar pugs, clones and rapalas and I think we got about 80% of our fish on the diving plugs off the stern corners. I really like the mag 20's they are always great producers. We left and anchored up for halibut on the way back in and managed a couple of 45# fish and at 6pm called it a day. All in all a great weekend epecially with all the other boats out there. I am glad all of you guys are really getting into this its a great fishery. I will be back in tofino this coming weekend weather permitting and hopefully will do it all again! It was excellent seeing all of you guys out there and birdsnest you are hard core man, solo fishing for albies carzy stuff!

Thanks for dropping off that tuna last night... Yummie