Dan’s Trip to Tuna Town!
BY Dan Diodati
With the warming summer months comes a time when most men get to live out their wildest fantasies. No, not that fantasy. I'm talking about landing the North East angler's dream fish. The elusive Bluefin Tuna.
The 2022 season, North of Stellwagon bank and below the fingers of Northern Jeffery's has been one for the ages. It's like being thrown into a time machine and warping back to 2008. With reports of football tuna ( under 73 inches) coming in more consistently and the bass bite slowing, I felt the need to switch it up!
When we hosted our fishing fair, I scored a couple of Shimano TLD 30's with custom stand-up trolling rods for a smoking price ($130) to help me start my tuna game on my boat. As soon as I bought the reels, I gave them to Martha at Surfland to go through and clean them up. Thank you, Martha!
I picked up an additional set of TLD 30's, and thanks to a great day of tuna fishing with Capt Mike of Manolin Charters, I was inspired to build two custom rods for myself. I assembled two Rainshadow RCTB56H blanks using heavy-duty Fuji saltwater guides and an ALPS size 12 roller tip. With four trolling setups ready for action (on the cheap), it was time to load up on gear to catch these unicorns.
Trolling spreader bars is a long-time tuna tactic that has fallen by the wayside since the disappearance of football tuna in our waters in the past decade. Spreader bars generally work best with outriggers to help put more lures in the water and make a pattern of "baitfish" behind your boat. Sterling Tackle came out with a great product a few years ago called the Wide Tracker Bar. The Sterling Wide Trackers have built-in planer boards that will widen the spreader bars outside your wake, negating the need for outriggers. These have been a massive hit in Cape Cod and south the past few years. I picked up a few colors (Black, White, Zucchini, and Green) of the 9-inch squids to try out.
When you are on the hunt for Tuna fish, things can change in an instant. These fish will blitz on bait balls and surface feed like nothing you've ever seen. I wanted to be prepared for this situation, so I kept two additional rigs on the boat. One is an incredible 30-60 rod from Ledgelife tackle. I say incredible because it has a soft tip but enough backbone to bring up six haddock at once, a halibut, or even a smaller bluefin tuna. For this situation, I slapped on a Seigler LG with 50lb power pro, a 50lb fluoro leader, and a single Mustad 8/0 demon 3x circle hook. My primary focus was to use this combo as a pitch bait set up to toss a mackerel into should I run into an epic feed. The second setup is another rod that I have turned, it's a Blackhole Challenger 7' Heavy blank outfitted with a Shimano Saragosa 18k, 80lb PP w a fluoro leader. For this particular trip, I tied on a Nomad Sinking Riptide in a mackerel pattern. On to fishing!
I left the dock around 2:00 in the afternoon. Later than I wanted, I'm an opportunist, and when the opportunity presents itself, I'm fishing. It was a calm afternoon on the water, and I zipped out to the (***Members Only***) and double back in shallower water until I found life. Somewhere between (***Members Only***) I began to troll the spreader bars at 5.6-5.8 mph
To continue the story, become a member of Mouths of the Merrimack
Join the team for only $7a month to unlock: * Members Only Podcast Clips * Private Facebook Group for Quick Community Communication * Free Raffle Tickets at Events * Live Special Podcast Access * Free Webinar Classes * Discounts on Fishing Related Items