Bluefin from kayaks

[JonS]

This winter I decided it was time to give bluefin tuna a shot from the kayak. Cape Cod bay has seen an influx of them in recent years. The problem was the fish have been doing very well and growing quickly. Reports were that the fish were running 150 pounds and bigger. Too big to take on from kayaks at least not as a first try anyway. ;-). I got a call from Joey. Danny found a captain who was interested in exploring kayak fishing for tuna. Danny called Joey and Joey called me. We were in. The boat is a 29’ cat and it only had the ability to transport 2 kayaks. So Hobie Revolutions and gear were put on the boat. The trip got cancelled twice and we finally went yesterday. Unfortunately the weatherman had it wrong for the morning. It was nasty and we were fishing near shore waters about 30 miles out. It was too rough to put kayaks in the water. We were butterfly jigging and caught a bunch of big bluefish, wrong kind of blue, and skipjack tuna. The weather was worsening and the predicted 5-10 mph winds were now 15-20 plus. We started heading in and hit another high spot and by the time we explored it the weather completely changed. It got very nice. The wind dropped and the seas calmed so the captain asked if we wanted to go to the canyon. We said yes and we were off to 50 miles from the beach. Danny got the first tuna and I hopped in Joey’s yak to assist in landing the fish. We were going to keep it so I gaffed it. Guestimation is it was about 40 pounds. Joey got the next one and it was about 10 pounds bigger and was released. We only got the 2 fish. Joey was a bit under the weather so I took his kayak and Danny and I fished the next couple hours. We had a couple hits and that was it. It’ll probably bust open today. I can’t wait to do it again.

Here's the link to the video Chris put together. http://www.catchthebite.com/fishing-video.html


We'll have a full article with more pics, video, etc. in the next issue of KFM. We couldn't wait to share.