Stellwagen Bank, Cape Cod Fishing Report

I have to put in "cod" trip because we did do a little cod fishing...But...the excitement of the fish around us just kept us from focusing on cod. I really love cod fishing, but....tuna jumping all around makes it tough to keep lines on the bottom. We did much the same as yesterday, but made a few more runs early for tuna.. This meant more addiction building. We had fish breaking pretty much all day today. And I mean breaking...we were able to approach a school and gets numerous casts into the school before they sounded. It was awesome. Some of the schools were little fish and some were big. Some were huge.

 

 

We found one school at dawn that was in perfect bait-ball form. Of course, they wanted nothing of what we were throwing at them. We had them around the boat, on all sides, for 10+ MINUTES!!! That's a lifetime of casting.

 

Dom, on Coastal Charters, had a special tool that I needed, so I picked it up, finding him surrounded by fish, as he often is. Brett got slammed there, nailed by a monster tuna 5' from the boat. The hook never found flesh, but it was still incredible...Off to cod grounds....

 

We got some meat for dinner, then back to the tuna hunt....I made a different run to the tuna, on decent info, and found them all to ourselves. It was good enough that I called Dom over. The entire time he was traveling, the fish were up and we were casting to him "it's a matter of time before we hook up". Minutes before he got there, nothing. Gone. I felt like a jerk. He hung around for 30 minutes, then took off again. 10 minutes later we were up to our eyeballs in fish. Bruce hooked up on a freight train. 10+ minutes later and we're still chasing, getting line back when the unthinkable happens..the reel breaks as the tuna is peeling line off against 25+ pounds of drag. Ouch. He's now holding a reel, not connected to the rod, as he gets completely spooled. Nothing we could do by get another line out there. The tuna were still blitzing!

 

HERE IS BAD PROTOCOL IF YOU'RE ANOTHER BOAT! DON'T TROLL THROUGH A SCHOOL OF FISH THAT IS 50' OFF OF ANOTHER BOAT!!! That really is a jerk thing to do. I work really hard to approach a school of fish and keep them from sounding. When you troll through the middle of them....it says right on the bottle of Moron Pills "MAY CAUSE YOU TO TROLL THROUGH A SCHOOL OF TUNA AND SCARE THEM AWAY." He O-D'd on them today. Not only did he do it once, and get yelled at by me, he came back 15 minutes later and did it to me again. We had the fish up 10' from my boat on all sides! Big fish, too. Great weather, great guys, and great fishing. I love what I do!