Had Steve Roberts and Jim Sutow out with the kids for a scheduled Thurs / Friday overnighter. We made the long run south from Manasquan, arriving in the area I wanted to start in at 5:15 AM. I had good bait readings immediately in 100 fathoms and quickly had a shot of fish come up and boil on our lures with only one staying hooked. We released a small bluefin and moved slightly offshore where the Canyon Runner was doing battle with a Bigeye. We found some bait and a slick out in 300 fathoms and got our first yellowfin after a few passes. Moving back into the 100 line, we started to pick away at the yellowfin, all nice fish in the 50-70 lb range.

As boat traffic increased in the area, the fish became more scattered. I moved away from the fleet finding a good bite just a few miles away, where we started getting shots at multiples. By 10am we were limited out and went into release mode. The pressure was off and it gave me a shot at doing some experimentation with spreads and lures. Once again, as boat traffic increased, I worked away from the fleet making a move across the deep and over to the other side. We found the fish again and started plugging away with a slightly smaller class of fish. With 30 fish by noon, we took a pass out in the deep looking for a marlin or bigeye. We found a few mahi but no big boys, so we moved back up onto the 100 and picked up right where we left off, releasing another dozen yellowfin in short order. With clock pushing 5pm, we decided to go on the drift and look for a mako. We put in a few hours with nothing to show, so with weather conditions deteriorating and a full fishbox, we made the decision to pull the plug and get back early.

This trip was one of the most intense trolling trips I have ever done. There were times we would see the fish come up behind the lures and track them for a few seconds before exploding on them. For single lures, skirted ballyhoo, tuna clones and Braid Ten Pins were top producers. On the spreaders bars the Green Machine, 9” purple/black and 9” zucchini bars produced tremendous numbers of fish. Here are a few pics of from the madness .. the rest can be found at canyonrunner.com.

Finally, as you can see from some of the pictures the kids fought most of the fish and were some of the best anglers weÂ’ve had on the boat in a long time. To make it easier on them I put out 6 Penn International 30TWs packed with 80 pound Berkley hollow core spectra with 80 pound momoi top shots by BHP Tackle. This combination of lighter reels and matching rods with 600 yards of spectra and mono proved deadly.