Yellowfins but now mostly Bluefins all over 47 inches on the 55 Hooked Up II Cape May

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Offshore fish report after 54 hours of fishing over last 4 days the on the 55 Hooked Up II

Earlier this week we had 22 Yellowfin in a few hours along with some nice Mahi but two days later the bite all but died and we were fishing a few miles north of the Washington Canyon. On our last trip canyon trip we put the lines in at 4:30 am and had only one keeper Yellowfin by 10:30 am so we opted to move inshore to the 20 fathom line and troll for Bluefins. This turned out to be a good move as we found a nice Bluefin tuna bite on all tuna over 47 inches and played catch and release for a while after boating our one legal over 47 inch Bluefin. It flat out saved the trip for us so decided to reschedule the following day’s canyon trip and run an inshore Bluefin trip instead with a few anglers from the Miami, FL area that were visiting friends in Sea Isle, NJ. Bluefin even the smaller ones in the 50-70 lb. range can provide quite a change from the Blackfin Tuna they catch down in South Florida and the Keys.

A synopsis of our last 5 days is the great Yellowfin bite down in the Portmans Canyon died a quick death so we turned to inshore Bluefin and rescheduled one of our day canyon trips as the group preferred a shot at Big Eyes but mostly wanted Yellowfin. We are hoping that the tuna show up in good numbers in on of our local canyon within 75-90 miles of Cape May in the near future as we have a bunch of offshore trips on the schedule for Yellowfins and Big Eyes. If the local canyons do not start producing quality tuna fishing then we will switch over to inshore Bluefin’s that provided some decent tuna fishing on every trip when we targeted them this past week. All the Bluefin’s we caught this week were in the 50-55 inch range with no under 47 ones so we ended up keeping one on all our trips and releasing the rest.

We are now going to offer 14-15 hour day combo Bluefin and Big Eye trips where we spend a few hours on the inshore Bluefin grounds then move offshore to the canyon that have the best Big Eye bite. We plan to arrive in the canyon around 4-5 pm and target Big Eyes trolling into the early evening and head back to Cape May arriving at our dock between midnight and 2:00 am. These trips could provide some great tuna fishing on larger tuna and definitely trips will test almost any anglers since all our tuna are caught stand-up. We will be jigging for both Bluefins and Big Eyes also for those that prefer tuna fishing with jigs.

I will post some pictures once we download them

[Caveman Sportfishing]

I got a few e-mails this morning from some of my Ocean City, MD friends that the bite down in the Poormans and Washington improved a little yesterday on keeper size Yellowfins so maybe we will see more action similar to earlier this week start up again. I personally would love to see more tuna show up in a canyon closer to South Jersey but we always go where the best bite is if possible.