LED Verdict is In

Had my first real world testing this weekend. The red LED on the way in Friday night was great. The crew was able to sit at the dinette with the light on and it did not affect my vision at all. It made them happy being able to find munchies and beer, read, etc. and I was not blinded in the process.

The white LED lighting was great at night cleaning up, reading, and in the morning making coffee and breakfast. It is not as bright as incandescent bulbs but more than enough light for my needs. I accidentally left the cockpit lights on from when we got into the dock around 7 PM until the next morning and my battery voltage at point had barely dropped overnight...only a few tenths of a volt.

I will be changing out my navigation lights this winter to LED's as well.

Blues & Fluke

We headed out a little late due to my getting out of work late. It would have been nice if the crew readied the boat but they started cooler diving early. We broke the inlet about 3:30 PM, just as it seemed the action was breaking up down off Seaside.

We had some small areas of bird activity but nothing to write home about. Had a couple of knock downs on red and black tubes. Snagged bottom letting one rig out in an area I had no idea had any structure...marked that spot as it seemed to be holding some small fish...will have to stop on it in the future when we have bait aboard.

Switched over to jigging and had a few blues in the 8 lb range and some short fluke also on both bucktails and iron. They must be really hungry, some of them were barely trice as long as the jigs.

It wasn't the numbers and species we were looking for but we had a good time, burned very little fuel and got to test my new LED lighting on the way in.

LED Marine Lighting - Part II

I gathered up all the leftover parts from projects over this season and returned them to West in exchange for a second Dr. LED Mars Dome, the 1 watt/3 watt white dome. I powered it up with a 12v power supply in the basement with low light in the room and total darkness. I was very impressed with the light output of both the 1w and 3w settings.

I was skeptical about LED replacements, and frankly the more common replacement bulbs seem to be very weak but the Dr. LED products with their built in drivers are awesome. It will be nice to be able to leave the lights on all night or for even several hours at a time now and not worry about draining the battery. I always hated turning the lights off and coming back to dark boat and straining to step on in the darkness.

Now I just need to get a motion sensor activated light for when I arrive to the boat in the dark.

LED Marine Lighting

I have been slowly converting my interior lighting to LED. For several reasons, but mainly to limit the drain on the batteries. I do not have shore power so when I overnight or weekend on the boat I rely on the house battery to power the lighting, stereo, coffee pot, etc. I had noticed a couple of times that if I had the v-berth light, dinette light and cockpit lights on for most of the night they drew a considerable amount of power. This was when I started looking into the LED alternatives.

I tried a couple of less expensive models out from Ancor and others available at local marine supply stores but they are nowhere near as bright or burn as cool as the Dr. LED lights. After doing some research I decided on the Dr. LED line of fixtures and replacement bulbs. I found the Dr. LED products to have the brightest light, in most cases, the least amp draw. I have installed their MR 16 Magnum Ring to replace the halogens in the v-berth and they are great - bright, cool (no longer burn yourself touching the fixture to reposition it) and plug directly in with no modifications needed. The light is a little different from incandescent or halogen bulbs, the LED's are much whiter light...excellent for reading...at least for me. I am going to try out their nav light replacement bulbs over the winter.

This weekend I replaced a dome light with a white/red LED dome light, the Red Mars Dome. Unfortunately it was bright and sunny so I am not really sure how well it is going to work yet. The v-berth lights are actually brighter than the old halogens, they don't get hot and hardly draw any power, so I am hoping the dome light will be just as good. The addition of the red lamp will be great as my crew regularly blinds me on our way out turning on the light to find things, getting rigged up or choosing which donut is next on their menu.

I was unable to test it at night as I did not stay over this weekend but during the day the white light seemed just as bright as my other incandescent dome light. Next time I stay over I will report on how the white and red light was at night.

First Blackfish Trip, No Keepers but...

We had high hopes of at least wreck fishing this weekend but with the NE blow the seas were just too much for us to get outside. I did however change the oil, check all the other fluids.

Having the urge to catch something Tommy and I decided to head over to the banks of the Point Pleasant Canal. We grabbed some clam out of the freezer, headed over to the bait shop for some crabs, grabbed a sandwich and headed for my favorite spot.

Knowing the current would be very strong we got there a little early but it is a must to get a prime spot. We got into position and ate lunch waiting for the current to slow. With the strong N to NE wind I was by about an hour with slack current but we had no where to be so we waited it.

Getting anxious I decided to give it a shot while the current was still racing, I had two or three subtle taps but that was about it in the first hour. Once the current started slowing though the fish turned on.

We probably had sixty to seventy blackfish between us with about twenty five sea bass mixed in as well. Unfortunately we had not one keeper between us. There were about a dozen others fishing withing view and out of all of them we only saw one legitimate keeper caught.

We did not get our limit of one fish per man but it was still good to have non-stop action and catch a mess of fish despite the conditions. To top the day off Tommy caught his first blackfish among the many caught today.

My First BFT

I guess the third time really is a charm as they say. It was our third bluefin tuna trip on my boat this year and on the third trip we finally got one!

As everyone arrived at the dock Mark and Wayne were a little apprehensive about going after they found out Tommy and I decided late last night to definitely sail for BFT and head out to the Mud Hole. We left the dock about 5:45 am with a full crew of Tommy, Mark, Wayne and myself. Despite the extremely swift currents in the canal due to Tuesday's full moon and with the max flood current predicted to be just about when we broke the inlet, the inlet was pretty calm.

Shortly after breaking the inlet I spoke to Scott on the Kimberly Ryan and they were about three miles out of Monster Ledge already...they were very anxious to get in on some inshore tuna fishing. About an hour later we arrived to our first spot and again checked in with Kimberly Ryan to see if they had any action yet.

We got to the west wall of Monster Ledge between first light and sun up, there were probably about two dozen boats there at that time with several charters chunking along the ledge. We set out our spread of bait and lures and started trolling the edges and zigzagging across the deep.

We had some good marks and fish deep, but no knockdowns. We keep expanding our pattern outwards and covering new water. The further out we went the less marks we had. As we started back in on where we had the best marks the port sort rigger line goes off. It was a red and white skirted ballyhoo.

With my boat having such a small cockpit the crew started clearing most of the lines right away leaving the starboard short rigger line in for a couple of minutes before clearing that line as well. It was funny as we were just discussing why we leave so early and never get our first fish before 9 am and at exactly 9:05 the rod went off.

It was a short battle that only lasted maybe 10 minutes and we had our under fish in the boat. My first bluefin tuna measuring out at 32" and weighing 22 lbs dressed.

We immediately reset the spread, changing out lures to all bait. We had an assortment of ballyhoo skirted in red and white, blue and white, green and white as well as naked hoos. We continued to work that area in tight and wide patterns but failed to find our over fish.

Later we started to troll towards the barn and Kimberly Ryan was doing the same and had a double header of an under and over fish about 8 nm away. They called us in on the action and we picked up and ran in some pretty sporty seas on the beam to their location. They had a dragger working the area and we had some pretty good marks up behind him but again could not get a bite. We then worked the area around the Lillian and good water and marks but not bites.

We worked that area for about an hour and called it quites and headed in. Water was clear and gray to gray/blue and 61.3 to 62.8 degrees

With the following sea and light NE breeze we were able to make much better time and a much smoother ride in. We ran in at 24-26 knots and broke the inlet from 26 nm out in just under an hour. It was a beautiful day on the water despite the somewhat choppy conditions making it a bit bumpy on the ride out and trolling with a head sea...but MY first BFT on MY BOAT...priceless!

Another Eastery Blow Ahead

Tomorrow's weather looks great. I can't get off of work, nor can I muster a four man crew for a weekday with ease. This coming weekend has forecasted for another East to Northeast blow coming our way most likely keeping everyone at the dock or at least in the rivers and bays.

I guess I will do my oil change, hose, belt inspection, torque nuts & bolts, etc. and then go for a boat ride. Maybe head over to the canal and do some black fishing.

Due to conflicting numbers from my fuel gauge I will also re-measure the tank to re-calculate the volume levels at various point of the gauge. I had previously calculated that at three quarters of a tank I have sixty six gallons, thus only needing twenty four gallons to fill the tank. When refilling this weekend from three quarters it only took twenty gallons to fill the tank. I know it may seem trivial but I like to know my range for longer trips, know that I can go out and come back with less than a full tank with confidence and if I have fuel delivered, how much to have brought in and end up with a full tank.

The dock box could use a good cleaning out, over the season lots of stuff gets tossed in as a temporary storage location and never makes it back out. I also need to get a good inventory of my sinkers for the upcoming wreck season.

As much as I would really like to get a good half to three quarter day of fishing in, I can get lots of odds and ends taken care of for those days when we can get out and won't have time to do them.

Striper/Wreck Trip...The Glass is Half Full

We bagged our offshore trip due to lack of reports from the canyons. Then we bagged our mid-shore trip again due to lack of reports and only a crew of three. It may have been a bad call with some reports trickling in from both the edge and the mid-shore waters.

Left the dock at 6 am and were shocked with the amount of boat traffic. More than any day we were out in the summer including the holiday weekends. The Point Canal looked like a Christmas tree when we looked back behind us with all the red, green and white lights.

Broke the inlet and were greeted with birds working from Bay Head South as far as you could see with the binoculars. We went from pod to pod of bait all the way down to Lavalette. Plenty of bait (peanuts and spearing) but only managed snappers and sea robins. The amount of sea robins was amazing, I think we caught more in two hours yesterday on both bait and jigs than we did all summer fluking.

After giving up on stripers we decided to hit some wrecks and rock piles on the Axel Carlson. With very little drift (.2-.4 knots) and no stellar pickings at any one location we drifted about eight different pieces. I had hoped to tie up and get some togging in but each wreck we tried was inundated with bergals to about 1.5 lbs. Some of the biggest I have seen inshore in a while.

We did manage probably over 100 sea bass and porgies though on clam, fiddler crab and gulp baits. Keeper ration was poor with many of the sea bass just under, right on or just over 12"...but with the small fillet size of a just legal fish we only keep fish over 14".We ended the day with a nice cooler of sea bass to 18" and porgies to 13" keeping only about a dozen fish for the table between the two of us and were back at the dock around noon.