Since January 1 there has only been a small handful of decent days to fish the deep ocean.  I have missed most of them.  Most days have brought winds in excess of 20 knots and cold air that makes a long run frustrating.  Yesterday was a rare exception.  Again, with family still visiting, we pushed off from KCB at the crack of dawn about 6:30am and ran hard to the SSE to the Marathon Hump.  It was smooth sailing until we got to the Gulf Stream and with wind againt current we had to slow up somewhat to avoid being pounded to death.  I always like to leave early for a Hump trip and get there before other boats arrive and push the tuna down.

By the time we arrived at the hump the seas were quite rough.  I didn't notice at first but two of my crew were not feeling well.  Cousin in law Paivi Blanchard had the egg burps but swore she was just fine.  I knew better and it was just a matter of time before she heaved and was talking to RALPH the sea god.    Paivi got over it and continued on like a trooper.  Cory then started chuming over the side, eventually ending up with the dry heaves. Cory suffered for the entire trip but did take a couple of tuna.

Despite the fact that we arrived as the second boat to the hump, no fish were busting and no birds were present.  Friends had told me not to worry, that the tuna were there, and just get the jigs in the water.  We used 7 oz. Williamson jigs with 30# floro leaders and 65# braid on Torium 30 reels.  All colors will work but I think pink is best.  This is an ideal set up I think.  We also ran two conventional freshwater bass outfits with 20# braid and 30# floro leaders using my successful and economical "butter knife" tuna jigs.  I'll be posting a separate thead soon on how to make these jigs.

We dropped from 30-45 seconds before locking up and doing the violent jig.  I'm guesing we were about 200' deep.  Usually we hooked up within 3-4 big jigs each time.  The light butter knifes took somewhat longer to drop but we had solid strikes on them also.  Fish came on every drop.  Some hit on the drop maybe only 100' down, lock up and you were on.  We had no shark bite-offs and the average size of tuna was nice with 5-10# as the norm.  No really big dogs were taken, but then we didn't really try to go real deep.  The current was screaming and we only got one drop per drift.  We boxed about 8 tuna, then caught and released many more.  I wanted to send down the big 14 oz. butteflies for the amberjack but our seasick friends had enough punishment.

Seas now were even higher, so we trolled back for about 10 miles taking an average wahoo on the gold/pink/green Billy Bait.  I had purchased and trolled the new Williamson wahoo lure with Sonic Strip that Got-Ta-Go had such luck with, but the wahoo chose the faithful Billy Bait.  Some birds and tuna groups were also about in the gulf stream and we trolled up a few more tuna as well.  No signs of dolphin anywhere, no debris or weedlines.  As we got out of the Gulf Stream things settled down and we reeled them up and powered on back to the dock having a great day.  Green, dirty, cold water was present out to about 14 miles offshore.

Billy, Paivi and Cory with a 3 way hook up.

TeamTeke Tania shows the true grit in her fight with tuna on the light bass rod

Tuna with butter knife

More of my butter knife lures

Our wahoo, Billy was the angler

The whole crew and some of the catch

This post was modified at March 13, 2010 - 9:03pm (EST) by TeamTeke