I welcomed Chuck Wandrie and his buddy Dave aboard the Lady Diane on Monday for a day for ground fishing and hopefully a shot at tuna.  Chuck fished with me last year and caught the largest cod of the season (45lbs) and he hoped a return engagement.  Dave is the founder of Daves Sporting Goods in Pittsfield MA (great store for all your fishing and hunting needs in the Berkshires) and is a very experienced fisherman and hunter.

After Saturdays pollack slam I felt confident about the trip and headed to where we left them biting that day.  On the first drift I noticed the tide was running a little hard eventhough we were near slack water.  We did scratch out a couple keepers but the bite was slow.  I decided to move to some humps to the east where the pollack were stacked on the last trip.  By now the tide had changed and was running very hard. I decided to try a drift sock but it was ineffective as the current drove the jigs perpendicular to the boats drift.  I brought out the man killers (21 oz jigs) but they also got swepted away.  Final try was to power drift while using the heavy jigs and that was slightly better but a real hard way to fish.

After a few hours of marking fish and putting a few nice ones in the boat, I decided to take a shot at an area about 8 miles away that I hadnt fished this year.  FIrst couple drops where blanks (fish where there but wouldn't bite) but I finally found a cooperative bunch on the side of the ledge.  We managed a few more keepers (haddock and cod) but we should have loaded the boat with the marks I was seeing.

Around the Noon slack I made the run down to the tuna grounds...nothing...not even a splash.  We set up for a couple more cod drifts and caught a bunch of shorts and maybe a couple more keepers.  We pulled the plug around 1300 as a front was approaching and the wind was increasing. 

On the way home about 2 miles off the beach, Chuck spotted some birds and I looked up from the fillet table to see a good bunch of tuna splashing but by the time we got to them they went down....they are still on these spike macs and they are hard to get.

Back at the dock I spoke with another tuna captain who had a charter and he said he did over 100 NM and never saw a splash.  The day before he took 3...TUNA WISHIN...you gotta love it.

Chuck and Dave loaded 100lbs of fillet into their coolers and hit the road.  I report what happens on all my trips both good and bad and this was a very slow day of cod fishing in my book.  The tide was the worse I have ever seen in this area, but the good thing is it was probably a one day event.

I noticed I have Saturday open this weekend and next week is wide open.  Fishing is great and I am not afraid to run a few more miles (we did over 60 NM today) to try and get you on the fish.  On the days I dont have charters I will be commercial fishing so check in to read to reports of my battles with charlie!

Tight Lines,

Capt George