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!