Hot Blackfin Tuna Action!!!!!

[Captain Joe McGivern]

With April right around the corner, the black fin tunas should be showing up in abundance. Today I recieved a last minute call from John and Scott from New Orleans to do a afternoon trip. We meet at 12pm at the dock and off we are to catch bait. We hit bug light and a hour later my bait well is blacked out with pilchards and herring. We decide to run down to Pacific reef to get away from the weekend crowd. We set up in 25ft of water, and get blown out really fast. In 70ft we catch a nice black grouper going about 15 lbs, and manage 1 kingfish. We continue to get blown out to 200ft without another bite. I run back into 50ft of water and put the baits back out. We decide to fish 2 Kites this drift and it pays off. We catch 1 kingfish on the flatline herring, and get cut off on the deep rod by the time we hit 100 ft of water.

In 130 ft of water we get a triple header sails on the kite and miss one other on the flat lines. Scott's sail was only about 15lbs so we land her fast and give chase to the other two. 30 minutes later we release the other two fish and are on our way back in for a thrid drift. We start this drift in 100 ft of water looking for some more sailfish. We take the drift out to 250 when we get hit on the long right kite bait. We didnt see what hit, but is was making a fast run offshore. We clear the flatlines, and give chase to the fish. After about 15 minutes I have a good idea of what it is. I tell John that we probably have a nice blackfin on the line. Ten minutes later i stick a healthy 28lb blackfin tuna.

Its now about 3:40pm so we quickly run bacl south to make another drift. We set back up and start chumming really hard trying to get another blackfin bite. We get covered up by peanut dolphin, release all but 1 about 10lbs. We get the baits back out when we get a nice hit on the midwater bait, but miss the fish. Immediatly after that rod goes off i see some tunas busting out chummers. We quickly pitch over 2 pilchards and both John and Scott are on. We proceed to land 5 more blackfins in the 8-15lb range and 1 more sailfish.



All in all it was another great day on the "Night Prowler". I have plenty of dates open in April so don't hesistate to call. Swordfishing has been pretty good the past few weeks, with a few friends of mine catch multiplul fish each night. The Darkside of the Moon Swordfish Tourney is right around the corner. I am open for the Tourney if anyone is interested please contact me for further details. Tarpon fishing has been on fire for almost everyone who has tried to catch a fish. I have talked to a couple of local Capt's and they said they have been getting an average of 3 bites per night. Give me a call, lets get out there and put some fish in the box!

Tightlines,


Capt Joe McGivern