Article by Capt. Lance Smith
If I could choose one fishing trip, to make people understand what offshore fishing can truly be like, it would be an overnight trip out of Ocean City, Maryland. Referred to amongst fisherman around the world as "overnighters," these 24-hour trips to the continental shelf absolutely optimize what this sickness is all about. I call it a sickness simply because once you have spent a night under the stars, 65 miles offshore, there is no cure for the inevitable addiction that will crawl beneath your skin, begging you to do it again. Yes, these overnight trips to the canyons can be quite pricey, but believe me when I say that there is no better way to spend your money. Once you have heard a bigeye screaming line off of an 80 class reel at sunset, witnessed dozens of yellowfins swarming in the lights behind a drifting boat under the stars or hooked a blue marlin at sunrise, your life will never be the same. For me at least, there is no other place in the world that I would rather be than three hours from land at three in the morning with three baited rods, drifting under a moon-lit sky in 1,500 feet of water.
There is no better time than right now to either book a charter, or prepare your own boat to spend a night in the canyons. With offshore water temperatures hovering around the 84 degree mark, tuna just are not comfortable coming to the surface to feed in the daytime heat. An analogy would be you or I having to walk into an un-airconditioned, mid-August, upstairs bedroom for an appetizer, or choosing instead to go to an all you can eat buffet in 65 degree comfort. Not only are tuna more active at the surface during the cooler dawn and dusk hours, marlin and mahi bites also tend to increase during these time periods as well. If the weather is going to cooperate, and you are willing to stay awake for most of the 24-hour trip, I urge you to make this journey to the edge.
If you decide to charter a boat for an overnighter, you will have the luxury of getting some shut-eye whenever you feel like it as your mate will be the person doing all of the work. Do not spend your money and go out there to sleep. Even if the tuna haven't shown up in the chunks under the lights yet, there is so much life to see out there that it would be a shame to miss out on it. You never know just what is going to show up off the stern and if you are lucky enough, an entire National Geographic documentary can swim by. Most decent charter boat mates will be able to identify the oddball animals that turn up and even provide you with some life history on them. Flying fish, mackerel, sharks, oceanic sunfish, porpoises, pilot whales and a host of other creepy creatures may stop by for a visit. Then the tuna show up!
If you are considering spending the night along the continental shelf in your own boat and have never done it before, you may want to hop aboard a charter boat for your first time to learn the ropes. The actual fishing part of the trip isn't that much different than during the day. You can choose to chunk or you can choose troll, with the best option being to do a little of both. What makes overnight trips a bit intimidating to people, is the preparation needed before you leave the dock. Whether you have a 24-foot center console or a 65-foot sportfisher, making sure that everything is in working order is paramount. All fluids must be checked on the engines and generator (if you have one), steering pumps should be checked, and most importantly, make sure you have back-up parts such as belts, hoses, nuts, bolts, etc., and the tools to install them. Arriving in the canyons at 3 PM to find out that an engine is low on oil, or a fuel filter is clogged and you have no way of fixing it is not a good way to start the night. Be prepared for something to go wrong. Remember, you're on a boat and stuff breaks!
Depending on the size of your boat, the weather is going to be the biggest determining factor as to whether or not you even leave the dock. If the forecast is for variable winds less than 10 knots for two straight days, you can overnight in a dinghy. It is up to you and you alone to make the call and determine if your crew can handle the conditions. If you are in a boat less than 40-feet and there is any Northeast wind forecasted, do yourself a favor and just stay home! Keep in mind that a forecasted, 10 knot evening can turn into a gail very quickly and thunderstorms are always a possibility this time of year. That being said, I would not be caught dead offshore with less than enough anchor line to hold me in 600-feet of water.
Remember how much scope you need to safely anchor and do the math, you're going to need a lot of rope. I also highly recommend at least an EPIRB, and a 6 or 8 man life raft will really put your mind at ease. In essence, the more safety precautions you take, the less time you will spend worrying when the sun goes down.
Let's move onto the good stuff. The bigeye bite has been incredible for the past few years and this season is no exception. Being an Environmental Scientist by trade, I have spent countless hours researching the habits of these Volkswagens with tails. Bigeyes should be your first and foremost target when the sun starts to set. Spending the daylight hours up to 1,000 feet below the surface, bigeyes rarely venture to the surface when the sun is out. There is a period however, an hour before the sun sets and an hour afterwards, that they swim above the thermocline and right under the pilot whales. When you find an enormous pod of pilot whales in water over 100 fathoms deep, the bigeyes are sure to be below them. Both animals are just about at the top of the food chain and 90% of both their diets consists of squid. Don't give up. Stay right on top of the pilot whales until the tuna surface. Many times there will be smaller yellowfin tuna jumping amongst the whales. Put out smaller rods and baits at your own risk! I guarantee you that when the bigeyes do surface, they will inevitably crush the smallest rod you have out. I personally go rigged for bear, meaning that I troll nothing but 80 class reels with bent butt rods, 80 pound line and 200 pound fluorocarbon leader. Five of these rods have heavy Ilander or Joe Shute type lures rigged with horse ballyhoo and the sixth rod is a big squid spreader bar run straight down the middle. Keep all of your lures/baits in close to the transom. Bigeyes are not boat shy like medium bluefins. They attack in schools and hooking one on a shotgun rod (often 200 yards behind the boat) in the middle of the fleet in the dark is not the best way to land one.
When the sun has been set for a few hours, its time to break out the butterfish and get the boat dirty. There is no one in the world who hates chunking more than I do. When schools of yellowfin show up under your lights, eating every piece of bait that you throw out, it is kind of hard to complain. Three flats of butterfish is usually enough bait to get us through the night if we troll until 10:00 PM or so. No matter what happens during the night, do not break that steady stream of butterfish chunks. Depending on the wind and tide, you may have to move a few times during the night to be where the fish are. Pay close attention to your fishfinder, but pay even closer attention to your radar and other boats navigation lights! I am a big fan of taking jumbo sized Norfolk spot offshore with me. If you can keep them alive, rig them under a ballon with a weight or let them swim freely. They will catch anything that swims in the canyons. Setting a spread of a few live spot, and having my crew drop and reel diamond and butterfly jigs, I will wait until tuna show up behind the transom before I use a butterfish bait. Rigged butterfish tend to spin and look unnatural on the hook. Using a chunk of butterfish with a circle hook hidden inside, and drifted in freespool up to 300 feet away from the boat can be deadly. Just make sure that your hook bait drifts back at EXACTLY the same speed as the rest of the chunks or tuna will not touch it.
Once those black shadows are cruising by off the transom and your butterfish chunks are disappearing as soon as they hit the water, it is game on. When the conditions are good and the tuna are starving, it doesn't seem to matter what size leader you are using. I like to start off with 90 pound fluorocarbon on upscale jigging rods spooled with 80 pound braided line and drop down in leader size if the tuna are shy.
Please remember when you are throwing tuna after tuna into the boat that you are going to have to clean and eat all of them. I see no reason for six people to bring back a limit of 18 yellowfins. Unless you have a lot of friendly neighbors and want to give away fresh tuna, have fun fighting them and release them for another day. There is nothing more foul tasting (at least to me) than freezer burned tuna. Disgusting!
When the boat is loaded with tuna and all you want to do is sleep as the sun begins to rise, prime marlin fishing time begins. Bigeyes will also come to the surface again if you start trolling an hour or so before daybreak. You can even stop and drop to the bottom for tilefish if your beautiful weather forecast held. Overnight trips may cost a little more and they be a bit intimidating for smaller vessels, but your odds of catching fish increase ten fold simply because of the time of day you have access to and that blood in your veins telling your brain that its going to happen. Any minute now..........BIGEYE ON THE RIGHT FLAT, ANOTHER ON THE BAR, TWO MORE JUST BLEW UP ON THE TEASERS! My voice is still hoarse from five days ago
Lance Smith is an outdoor writer and Captain of his family’s boat, “Longfin”.
