The Tuna are Here Now! If you want to catch tuna...read on!
Over the last week, the Bluefin Tuna have moved in quite nicely off the Maryland and New Jersey Shorelines. It seems these fish show earlier and earlier each season and stay later. From what we can tell, we are in for another exceptional Bluefin Tuna season here in the North East. There is really no better time to target these fish than right now. They have just shown up and have yet to be hammered on by the fishing fleets.
To make it even more interesting, we have some quality reports of yellowfin tuna in the canyons already as well. In years past, we have suggested that later in the Summer was a better time to target Yellowfin Tuna, but last Summer, the best bite was late June and early July. So...there is no reason to wait. If you are looking to do a tuna trip this year, they are hear now. Yes, it may get better on into the Summer and Fall. That would be terrific, but we have a good batch of fish here right now, and fishing pressure is light at the moment. The Bluefin can easily be targeted on 12 hr. day trips out of either NJ or MD. To get to the Yellowfin, an overnight trip is warranted, so we can fish first light and the late afternoon, and go the extra distance to get to the fish. On the overnight trip, we should also be able to stop inshore and target Bluefin and target Sharks in the evening.
For the rest of June and early July out of NJ, we will run special 28 hr. overnight trips, for the same price as our normal 22 hr. trips. This gives you an extra 6 hours to get in on some precious trolling time during the day.
It's been a long week! We traveled from Islamorada to Ocean City which took three and a half days and was very uneventful...thank goodness!
We fished today and did real well with the tunas. We had a group of 8 and they had more than their share of bites. The green spreader bar was a huge success for us as well as ballyhoo, fresh from Florida. Nothing special today as the fish seemed to eat real well for us all morning and slowed in the afternoon.
The water was 65.3 to 66.8 and a blend of clean green and dirty green. We started on the inside of the Hambone and had plenty of nice bait marks. It looked to me to be sand eels and butterfish. The bottom was lit up in some areas and as I did a little wandering we didn’t find a whole lot out by the Hot Dog. We did manage to get several bites working that way but lost most of our bait. The fish ranged mostly from 37” to 45” and we did manage to find a nice fat one that weighed in at 125lb’s!
The shark fishing seems to be going rather well also. I did hear of a 506lb Thresher boated today as well as several Makos all inside the 20 fathom line. So, overall things are off to a real great start! We are really going hard at it starting Thursday so stay tuned!
We have added a lot of new products in our Offshore Store over the last two weeks.
We are fresh with a new shipment of OU Fishing Shorts and Shirts! Shorts come available in sizes ranging from 28' to 40' for $55. Fishing shirts range from Medium to Double XL. These will be available on our online store within the next couple of days or come on into our store at Avalon Pointe Marina, exit 13 GSP..
We also have a new batch of our favorite Blue Marlin Lure, the "Ricks Fancy", which we've been sold out of for the last month as well as some great offshore leadering gloves, shark floats, release clips, and spreader bars.
Audio Fishing Reports
Take a listen to this week's reports and listen first hand what's biting!!
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