06-26-2002, 12:01 AM
Last week Amy and Bear Allbright from Wisconsin fished with Tuna Hunter. We started the morning off jigging for live mackerel - enough to fill the baitwell. It is nice when they come over the rail 4 at a time! With a full tank of bait, we headed off to 130 ft of water 3 miles off Gloucester. We started trolling three rods, one weighted in the middle, all towing live mackerel. The fish finder was marking a few large bass, but not much for feed. <br><br>Bear soon had a good run off but hit the bass too soon - one fish lost. The mackerel are 15 inches long and the striped bass need a good 7 count (at least) before moving to reel one's catch in. It was a good thing Amy was along - she counted the full seven and hooked a nice bass with circle hooks through the mouth. <br><br>Using circle hooks, one wants the fish to set the hook himself - it takes the full count to let the fish do the work. A pull too soon pulls the bait away from the fish. A lot of boats use treble hooks, but they are sure death for a short bass, under 28 inches, when hooked in the deep throat. <br><br>Amy's bass was thirty-nine inches - a great fight on spinning tackle. Bear hooked his next bass on the deep rod. He said this bass - at 33 inches - was a lot larger than the walleye he is used to catching in the Great Lakes. <br><br>Our next attack was from large bluefish that fought hard for a short time, then bit through the leader. We changed the surface line to a wire leader and caught the toothy critter, a nice 13-pounder. We fillet the bluefish by cutting out the red centerline, then cook in cream of mushroom soup - tasty stuff. We started letting the blued free. They sure can tear up some spinning tackle. Amy trolled up one more keper bass and the offshore bass trolling dried up. we then fished the rocky Gloucester shore for more bass action.<br><br>During the week, the Osoro crew fishing with Tuna Hunter. the water temp rose to 62 degrees- a big jump - and the mackerel so plentiful a few days earlier were gone. We jigged up a baitwell full of pollock and ran offshore to the offshore bass hole. Looked like our first bite was a big striped bass - but it pulled the hook at the boat. We lost the next pollock to a bluefish and changed voer the wire leaders. The blues came in fast ,eating the pollock as soon as they hit the water - what great fun to toss your bait, get a hit, reel like crazy, and repeat. When the bluefish blitz died, we moved into the shoreline rock piles for bass action, chumming the bass in with fresh herring chunks.<br><br>On Sunday, Tuna Hunter fished with the Brown family from Manchester, MA. Two grandfathers, two sons, and twin thirteen-year olds. Again no mackerel - water temp still high. We stopped at a good island hotspot and filled up on live pollock, but no bass bites. All eyes were on the captian and the pressure was on - 6 anglers and no real species to count yet. The stakes on this crew were high - team against team with all sorts of wagers going. The fog was thick, but radar is a beautiful thing. We took off towards the Norhteast to a new rock pile and found some hungry bass. We had fast action fishing chunks and circle hooks so we would not hurt the short bass. We kept five bass for the family barbeque. We look forward to this group of anglers again - patience payed off - these guys landed a large number of bass by the end of the day (we're not telling...).<br><br>