I seem to remember saying that the fishing was getting ready to turn loose. I was right.

My group expressed an interest in trying for tuna today, eventhough there was outstanding dolphin fishing yesterday. We had some bites, mostly blackfins and a king mackerel, before things kinda slowed up. We went off in the deep for a while and got wrapped up with the gaffer dolphin a couple of times. I think we wound up with 14 of them. I headed back inshore to see if the tunas had changed their mind, and they had. We had some great action in the afternoon, and by the time the smoke cleared, we had landed 14 blackfins and three yellowfins. The blackfins averaged 15 pounds, with a couple probably close to 20. The largest yellowfin probably went 30 pounds. Elsewhere in the fleet, there was one blue marlin released, one white marlin, and a few wahoos. Congratulations Leonard on your first tuna!!

Ok, this is it. The weather is getting straightened out, and the fishing is starting to get really good.

It sounded like fishing was pretty good for most of the boats, over a big area. We fished a little further to the east today, and wound up with a real nice catch. We caught eight yellowfins, the largest was probably 45 pounds, one blackfin, one gaffer dolphin, one nice citation size wahoo (40 pounds), and a couple of amberjacks. It is supposed to be a gorgeous week, and the reports from down south indicate that we should be about to have some good dolphin fishing as well as tuna and billfish. Don't let this opportunity pass you by!

We had good action right out of the gate this morning, but it dried up for the majority of the day.

We hooked and landed a nice wahoo as we were setting out our lines this morning, so I had my party's attention right away. It wasn't but a short time before the yellowfins hit us pretty good, and we managed to save four of them. A couple of blackfins and an accidental amberjack would take us up till 9:00 AM. Only trouble was, that would be the extent of our action for the day! My group wanted to stick with trolling, so the amberjacks and kings that were available were not really an option, but they were there. There was a scattered gaffer dolphin around the fleet as well. Glad to have caught some nice fish!

We had a mix of different kinds of action, but most of all we had a beautiful day!

Yesterday the yellowfins were abundant, but the bite was quite slow today for some reason. We got lucky this morning and caught a pair of yellowfins, and a little later caught a wahoo, but that would be about all for the trolling action. We got in position for some afternoon jigging, and had a ball catching amberjacks and one blackfin tuna. There was a scattered dolphin around as well, but we didn't see any of them today.

I didn't fish yesterday, but the reports were so good, I had to post an update.

The tuna fishing heated up to a level that we would expect for Hatteras in April, yesterday. I talked to a couple of my dock parteners who indicated that the yellowfins bit good, and not just in one spot, there were bites all up and down the line. I hate missing action like that! I'm available till Friday, so make it happen this week!

Fishing was pretty good today, and there was an assortment of species caught.

I headed south this morning, along with two other Hatteras boats. It looked like we were gonna kill the yellowfins because we caught two out of four bites on our first pass over the break, but it wound up not being quite that good for us. We still had good action though, and managed to pull in one more yellowfin, for a total of three, a handful of blackfin tunas, three dolphin, and one king mackerel. We stopped to jig up some amberjacks, and the guys had a blast playing tug-a-war with them. As a bonus, near the end of the day, we released a sailfish that rose to a shortrigger, and Justin switched off to one of our new LXs on a dink pole. Great fight. Another great trip!

It was such a beautiful morning, and we were feeling adventurous, so we headed to the south to take a look around.

I am satisfied that we made a good decision, and the fishing was really pretty good down there. My group fished yesterday, and got all the amberjacks they wanted, as well as a belly full of bottom fishing, so I was instructed not to do either. Both were good though, for the boats that did it. There was also a great sign of king mackerel, and a couple boats caught what they wanted jigging ballyhoos. Again, my group remained purists, and wanted to continue trolling. We had some good luck when we hooked six yellowfins at once, but we only managed to land two of them, 30 pounders. A little later we had a couple of wahoo bites, hooked one, and pulled him off too. I worked back in to the break, and we hooked our first blue marlin of the year. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes, but he was on one of our tuna rigs, with a light leader, and eventually wore through. Eventhough our luck wasn't the best, we stuck with it, and did wind up catching a wahoo towards the end.

There was a little variety out there today, dolphin and tuna for us.

The wind was a little breezy today out of the west/northwest, but once we got to the warmer water, it was surprisingly nice. We caught five yellowfins in the 25 pound class, and had a handful of gaffer dolphin bites, landing seven of them. There were a couple of wahoos landed today, along with a scattered blackfin tuna in amongst the boats that were out.

The last couple days, the yellowfin fishing has been pretty good.

There has been a boat or two with great catches of tuna the last couple of days, but for the most part, everybody came in with just a handful of fish in the 30-35 pound range. The location of the bites has been very random, and you could be lucky or unlucky very easily. Ysterday we caught a blackfin first thing in the m orning, and a little later on got struck by the yellowfins, hooked four out of five, and they all pulled off. Sadly, that would be the extent of our action.
Today was a little better overall, we caught four yellowfins and a small gaffer dolphin. My group wanted to give the jigging poles a work out, so we quit trolling and broke out the LXs for some light action. It was a successful tactic, and everybody had a good time bending the poles. Today was a gorgeous day on the water!

We shot up to the east this morning to try our luck with the bluefins again.

There was no shortage of bluefins again today. We kept a 140 pounder, and each of the remaining five guys all released one about the same size. I had heard bits and pieces of some decent yellowfin action back closer to home, so I was encouraged to hear that they had made a better appearance. We got struck twice by the yellowfins ourselves, as we worked the 100 fathom edge back to the southwest. The first time we landed four out of five bites, and the second time we caught two out of four. Not a bad way to wrap up and already great day!