Except for awful weather conditions, catching, hauling and stowing fresh live bait was probably the most hard giant tuna barrier for my crew last season. I’m very happy to point out that so far this autumn, the latest on the live bait front is a lot more encouraging.
Last week I headed the Miss Loretta way down Cape to Lewis Bay, just outside the Hyannis Marina. My fishing buddy had done a tuna bait run in Lewis early on in the week, and encountered plenty of ideal size blues feasting on 2 inch young of the year menhaden. Our expectations were set high for a abundant giant tuna bait trip.
To my surprise, the public fishing boat ramp at Lewis Bay is fantastic. It is a paved launch, with a perfectly newly constructed boat dock in addition to a great deal of area to operate a pickup truck and trailer. Furthermore, there was no fee. I am speculating free of cost easy access was indeed a post-Labor Day miracle, and probably isn’t an excpected standard at Lewis. In any case, it worked for me!
Subsequently, after some searching about we found the motherload of blues loaded up in 7-18 ft . of water. The piles of snapper and rat blues shifted up and down the channel edge, yet there appeared to be tons of bait size bluefish, to the point that when we lost track of them, it did not take long for my crew to move around and quickly zone back in again.
The schools of small bluefish swum from place to place, and yet there ended up being so many bluefish, that when we stopped catching, it didn’t take long for us to move around and quickly zone back in again. The fastest action occurred the moment the tide began running in. The action slowed very quickly at the time the current began to come to a halt, at just about noon time.
We put up with a large amount of snapper bluefish that are just too small to employ as bait for bluefins.
In spite of this, for every twelve tiny blues we caught, we would hook one more substantial bluefish-appropriate for live bait. It turned out that anytime we located a school of baby pogies, we found larger bluefish in the vicinity.
Best producing lure for the small blues was a golden 1 ” spoon. This lure casts far and long on very light line, and hooks the blues remarkably well. Hot lure for the 12-20 inch bluefish was the 3in. floating, blue Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow.
I’m seriously hoping that this hot spot becomes packed with 12-20 inch bluefish through September and October.
It would be great to find a consistent source of bluefin tuna bait. Regardless of whether we have to trek a little to get there.
Captain Ryan Collins fishes for striped bass and Bluefin tuna off Cape Cod, MA. Visit his blog, myfishingcapecod.com for insider how to catch striped bass.
