Bob Bradley
Legendary Member
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2005
- Messages
- 3,664
- Hatteras Model
- 43' CONVERTIBLE-Series I (1978 - 1983)
Ambrosia Mae had a couple interesting days fishing in the Fishtails Marina. We headed out Wed morning after a painfully slow morning of grocery shopping, fueling, and taking on ice. Commitments on Tues prevented me from getting set up ahead of time unfortunately. Fortunately, it did not impact the fishing at all, as I think we would have had just as much luck trolling Fishers Island Sound for tuna as we had trolling in the Tails. Not so much as a stray knockdown on the troll.
We set up on the chunk early (or so we thought) Wed evening, around 7:30, and quickly had fish interested in our offerings. That was great, except that we managed to go 0 for everything for the next several hours as we broke off fish after fish. We were all getting pretty pissy at this point, wondering which dipshit among us was tying substandard knots, or worse, putting out rigs with overhand knots in them. Finally, we started scale testing the rigs and determined that our 80# flouro had degraded to where it had a 34# breaking point. We retied several rigs on some good 60# flouro and finally managed a single 70# yellow some time in the wee hours of the morning, just before the bite let up. Great start - 1 for 14 or so. Ughh.
Happy to put the night behind us, we got up on the troll early Thurs. After trolling all morning and into the afternoon without so much as a sniff, we decided on the chunk around 2:30. We talked to my buddy Eppe on the radio as he was heading north to steam home, and he was kind enough to meet us and pass over a few spools of flour, as our supply of 60# was very low.
We heard a report from a dive boat nearby that there was an abundance of yellows just below 150', and that they had even managed to spear some. Meanwhile, we had a nice mako, around 6 - 7' wander into our slick, so we quickly fileted a chicken mahi and put it out as an offering and pulled the tuna spread. We couldn't entice him to take, so we went back to tuna fishing and actually caught our first daytime tuna on the chunk - a decent 40# albie.
As dusk came on, the yft bite picked up nicely. We started our drift well west of the fleet, hoping to time our drift such that the rest of them were resetting as we got into he heart of the canyon. That worked for a drift or two, but some time around midnight, we reset, and shortly afterwards, a big head boat, the Voyager out of New Jersey, set up about 100 yds away from us. As we both drifted, it became clear that we were closing on each other. One of us suggested moving, but I said no way, we were here first, and besides they were dumping buckets of chum in just 75' away. We wound up having a great time yelling back and forth between us every time one of us hooked up, and even had their captain yelling out congrats on his hailer to the Ambrosia Mae after we landed a double. Finally we drifted around to the wrong side of them, and as I was about to move to avoid tangles, of course one of our rods went off and a nice tuna proceeded to wrap itself around about 10 of their lines. They were all decent about it and backed off their drags allowing us to bring the tuna and the tangle mess up to our boat. Unfortunately, the fish broke off 5' under our boat, leaving the mess behind. I cut our line and left it to their mate to untangle, and moved a couple hundred feet away.
By the end of the night, we had a total tally of 8 nice yft and one decent albie. Hopefully the bite will hold for another couple trips, but even if it does not, this was one for the records, fishing with 5 boats all within 100' or so of one another, and all managing to work with one another to keep fishing.
We set up on the chunk early (or so we thought) Wed evening, around 7:30, and quickly had fish interested in our offerings. That was great, except that we managed to go 0 for everything for the next several hours as we broke off fish after fish. We were all getting pretty pissy at this point, wondering which dipshit among us was tying substandard knots, or worse, putting out rigs with overhand knots in them. Finally, we started scale testing the rigs and determined that our 80# flouro had degraded to where it had a 34# breaking point. We retied several rigs on some good 60# flouro and finally managed a single 70# yellow some time in the wee hours of the morning, just before the bite let up. Great start - 1 for 14 or so. Ughh.
Happy to put the night behind us, we got up on the troll early Thurs. After trolling all morning and into the afternoon without so much as a sniff, we decided on the chunk around 2:30. We talked to my buddy Eppe on the radio as he was heading north to steam home, and he was kind enough to meet us and pass over a few spools of flour, as our supply of 60# was very low.
We heard a report from a dive boat nearby that there was an abundance of yellows just below 150', and that they had even managed to spear some. Meanwhile, we had a nice mako, around 6 - 7' wander into our slick, so we quickly fileted a chicken mahi and put it out as an offering and pulled the tuna spread. We couldn't entice him to take, so we went back to tuna fishing and actually caught our first daytime tuna on the chunk - a decent 40# albie.
As dusk came on, the yft bite picked up nicely. We started our drift well west of the fleet, hoping to time our drift such that the rest of them were resetting as we got into he heart of the canyon. That worked for a drift or two, but some time around midnight, we reset, and shortly afterwards, a big head boat, the Voyager out of New Jersey, set up about 100 yds away from us. As we both drifted, it became clear that we were closing on each other. One of us suggested moving, but I said no way, we were here first, and besides they were dumping buckets of chum in just 75' away. We wound up having a great time yelling back and forth between us every time one of us hooked up, and even had their captain yelling out congrats on his hailer to the Ambrosia Mae after we landed a double. Finally we drifted around to the wrong side of them, and as I was about to move to avoid tangles, of course one of our rods went off and a nice tuna proceeded to wrap itself around about 10 of their lines. They were all decent about it and backed off their drags allowing us to bring the tuna and the tangle mess up to our boat. Unfortunately, the fish broke off 5' under our boat, leaving the mess behind. I cut our line and left it to their mate to untangle, and moved a couple hundred feet away.
By the end of the night, we had a total tally of 8 nice yft and one decent albie. Hopefully the bite will hold for another couple trips, but even if it does not, this was one for the records, fishing with 5 boats all within 100' or so of one another, and all managing to work with one another to keep fishing.
in the beginning with the leader breaking how old was the stuff?
