broke barnegat inlet abouts 0530 and headed straight to barnegat ridge north.
found 67.6 water temps, threw out the trolling gear, which was a rainbow squid spreader, green machine daisy chain, cedar plug, and a green & chartreuse zuker chain and continued south east towards the fingers.
couple tuna chicks here and there not doing much. no other life to be found.
hit the fingers and turned north, water temp dropped a little bit. came across giants pods of dolphins, trolled on through, marking bait. got through them all, got turned around to go back over the mark i made over the bait, and everything was gone, they just disappeared,,, trolled around a good bit trying to relocate the action to no avail. continued on and trolled to the dusky hole. nobody home there either.
started to wonder if i was in to cold of water, pulled everything and went north to the resor wreck area.
stopped a mile out of it threw the green machine chain, and the rainbow spreader back in the drink, then made a big loop around another boat that looked like he was chumming over top of the wreck.
2 miles north of the resor we hit 68.4 water temps, and the dolphins showed back up. seen a shark finning the surface, figured he was gonna steal my rigs, but luckily not. marked some bait about 5 minutes after the sharked it happened,,,, reel started to scream, FISH ON!
bumped the motor down, but left it in gear to help keep tension, got the other line out of the way and it was on. he made a couple runs, got it alongside the boat and tried to dive to china. the tld20 was still in strike position as i didnt feel the need to crank up the drag on him.
he got tired out after a second dive along the boat, sweet, gaff time, he's somewhat cooperating with placement. still a lot of spunk left in him, but not enough to make another run off. a couple swings and misses with the gaff, but we got it in the end, here he comes, bluefin over the rail!
totally awesome, first for the boat, first for me, and first for SeaChelle, lots of hooting and hollering going on.
fish taped 31 inches, and boga'd 22lbs. got the fish taken care of and on ice, pack in the gear and call it a day, not wanting to be greedy on our first's.
light breeze
2 foots seas, some times less
partly cloudy
68.4 degree water
rainbow sterling tackle 18" squid bar, (bought from njsw tackle) 300' back
5.5 to 6 knots water speed.
hook up time was around 1100
and, the pics. loving this camera, just can't figure out how to make them bigger in my post's.
and last but not least, thanks rod for the prepping help/directions
addon caption for this one,,, yup, thats a tuna
