I took the day off and went fishing on my buddies boat (24' Scout) looking for Bluefin. We had a couple of areas that we wanted to check out, but decided on one as the bait receiver guy gave us intel that matched some other intel we got the night before.
We were on the water heading out by 2am. That was the first time I launched from Shelter Island since they completed the ramp. I'm not sure if I like it or not. It doesn't seem terribly improved, but it's definitely better than before.
On the way out we here seeing glowing blue critters in the wake. I finally figured out that it was Valella after the sun came up. We metered a few bigger fish under a bait ball and dropped the flat falls, but no love. No boats on the radar, so we kind of knew we were in the wrong area, but we found a paddy and it was loaded.
We caught a bunch of typical size paddy yellows (5-8lb) and even got a 5-1/2 foot mako that shut the bite down. My buddy wanted to keep the mako, I was going to release it, so i told him if I get it to the boat, then we'll keep it. I had a size 4 live bait hook on and it was jumping all over so never thought I would actually get it in. It seems the little mako wanted to die.
Perfect eating sized mako I split with him. I made Teriyaki Shish-ka-bobs with it last night and were fantastic!
We packed up and ran south looking to see where the fleet was, but could not locate them by radar. We did drive through a 30 square mile patch of Valella though! They were thick!!!!
The water started getting colder and greener as we headed south, so decided to head out to the 43 and look around. The water went from 61.4 and green to 65.9 and GIN CLEAR!!! The water was beautiful!, Unfortunately, we didn't see any major signs of life. We found another paddy and chummed it up. The bigger yellows came out to play on this one!
Well, bigger is a relative term, but still fun to catch...
We got plenty of yellows... trolled for a bit.... then headed to the barn. The wind started to kick up and it was a long ride in.
Super fun even though we didn't locate our quarry, or any other boat for that matter!
Thanks for reading....
