Left the dock at 4:30 and headed over to check out. Caught the darn train bridge…thought we would miss the first train but caught it. The checkout was much more organized and civil than years past when boats were circling to check out and racing out from the monument.

Broke the inlet set our course for our spot some 50 plus nautical and had a very uneventful ride out. Didn’t see much life on the ride out and the water was pretty warm the whole ride out and didn’t start dropping in temp till we were almost 45 off. Ride out took a little over 2 hours 30 minutes but was a nice ride out compared to the last two years.

Got the slick setup and rods out and before we got the last rod out had our first bite. First fish, mako, and released about a 100 pounder. Got reset and about 20-30 minutes later we get our second run off. It played with the bait for a while. Then hit another rod, fought the fish for a few minutes, get it near the boat and another small mako released. Get reset again, change all the baits out to what had the first two fish, bonita fillet and squid and reset all the rods.

Had a couple of run offs and a stripped bait. Then we get a double header, drop one and hook one for our third fish. I’m on the rod and get the fish to the boat and it is another small mako about 50-60 pounds. Released that fish, reset the rods and then it was quiet for a little while. We put a time limit on moving back up our slick and we get another run off that never came tight.

We moved back up the slick, about 45 minutes later we get another run off that quickly went slack. Then as we are getting ready to call it a day we get a real good run off. Get the other lines cleared, fight the fish for a little bit and nice dusky comes up. Released that one and got cleaned up and headed in.

We never found the fish we were looking for but had good action with several run offs, three makos to the boat, one pulled hook near the boat and a dusky.

We never found the cooler water but there was tons of life out there. Turtles, bait, birds. The guys a little further off in the Toms and Hudson were picking YFT and eyeballs but were covered up in bluefish and it was tough getting through them to the tuna. On the ride in the water ranged from 74 to 77! It looks to be shaping up for a good inshore tuna season.

On the ride in we heard from a friend of ours from down our dock that was racing in with a nice fish to weigh. They ended up hanging a nice fat 232 to put them in 3rd in Mako Fever and 4th in Mako Mania at the end of Saturday. We wish Brian and the crew of the Bella Mia the best of luck in maintaining their position through today.

I won’t be making it offshore for another week. Due to family obligations I need to be closer than 8 hours away on a good day. Plus it is not fair to put the rest of the crew in that situation of having to rush in if a call is received. So I decided to stick close and weak fish this weekend, there is always next weekend.

It looks like we may finally after canceling three times get to run offshore! Let’s keep our fingers crossed…the longrange forecast looks pretty good for Friday into Saturday and we may finally get to run to the deep for tuna, swords, wahoo and mahi. Can’t wait, it has been a long time since I have been out to the deep and can’t wait to get out there again.

Another boat in my marina returned from the canyons with a boat load of mahi mahi, three longfin to 63 pounds and two yellowfin to 45 pounds. They started out Friday night at the Lindenkohl. Saturday morning they started trolling towards Tom’s but found colder surface temps so they headed back to the Lindy. Trollud up a few there. Then trolled to Carteret to spend Saturday night on the chunk. Trolled to Tom’s on Sunday morning then to the Hudson.

Since there were only two capable filletmen I decided to offer my help in return for a few tuna steaks and mahi fillets…little did I know at the time was how many mahi there really were to be filleted. The three of us filleted fish four about 4 hours till all were cleaned and packed on ice. And that was with several others in the marina taking their share of mahi home whole to fillet it themselves.