Article by Capt. Lance Smith
Well, if you haven’t booked a charter for a trip to the offshore canyons yet this year, it’s a good thing you saved your money. The next few weeks, until about the middle of October, are my favorite time of year to fish for pelagics. If you have your own offshore-capable vessel, and are fed up with the lack of tuna, don’t put your boat up on blocks just yet. Yes, the weather this time of year can be spotty, but the fishing certainly isn’t. We had a terrific run of nice-sized yellowfin in late May and early June when the water temperatures were to their liking. Unfortunately for tuna fisherman, waters quickly warmed into the high 70’s and low 80’s and the yellowfin either moved north or stayed in town but remained below the thermocline.
Offshore, water temperatures are about to start falling again and tuna, wahoo, marlin, and mahi will be schooling up and feeding heavy for their next journey South or East.
I can remember reading a study many years ago which stated that larger yellowfin do not feel comfortable coming to the surface in water temperatures over 74-degrees. The inshore lumps and canyon edges have been sustaining surface water temperatures well over that mark since the end of June. As the days shorten, and the water temperatures drop correspondingly, yellowfin will soon (as in by the time you read this) be fattening up on sand eels and squid anywhere between the Sausages and Norfolk Canyon. The absolute best way to get in on this action is to book, or go your own overnighter. If you don’t feel comfortable spending 24 hours offshore, you can still take advantage of this sometimes mad-dog tuna bite.
By listening to the dock chatter, and reading the reports here in the Coastal Fisherman, where the yellowfin are staging will quickly become apparent. Places like the Hot Dog, that have been devoid of life all summer, will soon be loaded with fish. It won’t last long however. They will be there one day and gone the next. Starting your day somewhere around the 50-fathom line this time of year is always a good bet. I have personally found great fishing by simply watching the watercolor and water temperature while on my way to the day’s destination. While running offshore, keep a sharp eye out for changes in anything. Watercolor, temperature, slicks and upwellings can all put you on the fish. If you happen to spot a bunch of tuna-chick birds picking at the water surface over a slick calm portion of water, stop the boat and get some lines in! Always keep in mind that while we are out there fishing for sport, the birds are there to survive! Tuna have no boundaries and can show up anywhere from 40 fathoms inshore of the Baltimore to 500 fathoms in the Norfolk Canyon.
Much like yellowfin, dolphin (mahi-mahi) will begin heading south and east as the days grow shorter. I can remember a day, in 50 fathoms inshore of the Poor Man’s Canyon, where I found well over a hundred large dolphin schooling underneath a single yellow wireman’s glove. I will let this cat out of the bag as well - whenever you come upon a floating object or weedline, include a large chrome rattle trap in your spread of lures. Put this lure out on a lightweight outfit and it will quickly notify you of any mahi in the area. The Northeast winds of the fall will not only convince pelagics to start foraging for their journey; they will also begin to stack weed and debris lines. Not only dolphin school around these surface obstructions, white marlin and tuna will feed on the many baitfish taking refuge beneath them.
During the next few weeks, my favorite offshore fish, wahoo, will school in numbers great enough to make them your only target for the day. For most of the summer, wahoo are an incidental bycatch caught by boats trolling for tuna and marlin. Over the past decade or so, there has been a very consistent wahoo bite in the fall between 30 and 50 fathoms. I have had days where we have set out to do nothing else than catch fall wahoo, and some of them have been spectacular.
Tweaking your normal tuna spread is all that is required to catch some of these toothy speedsters. Firstly, make sure that every lure or bait behind the boat is on single strand wire instead of a monofilament or fluorocarbon leader. If not, you will quickly find that you have had strikes, but no longer have any lures! Instead of trolling at your normal 6 to 7 knot speeds, try kicking the throttles up so that you are moving along at 8 knots or slightly more. Deploy large bonito-style lures such as the Marauder on your flatlines, and heavy Ilander style lures with ballyhoo to fill in your spread. The downriggers that you have used all summer to drag dredges for white marlin can become deadly wahoo catching tools this time of year. Try setting ballyhoo with black/red or black/purple skirts down 25 to 50-feet in the water column. We have had days of 4 or more wahoo over 40 pounds caught from areas such as the Hotdog and points slightly south and east, out to about 50 fathoms. Anywhere that you spot a surface upwelling or “rip” is an excellent place to begin trolling for wahoo. While solitary in nature for most of the summer months, these giant mackerels begin to concentrate on the same lumps while competing for the same forage base.
The star of the fall offshore season is unquestionably the white marlin. As I write this, somewhere around the Washington Canyon and down to the Norfolk Canyon, our city’s namesake fish will be schooling and cutting bait in incredible numbers. It isn’t uncommon to find hundreds of whites in an area less than an acre in size that are feeding voraciously with their dorsal fins slicing the surface. It is truly a site to behold. These marlin are typically feeding on small baitfish in the 3 to 5-inch range and using the smallest available ballyhoo will get you the most bites. Dredges, sometimes run in double or triple configurations, and rigged with natural mullet or ballyhoo will help to pull the whites away from their natural forage and into your spread. It certainly isn’t unheard of to have five or six white marlin smacking your trolled baits at the same time. This is when professional crews rack up catches of twenty to thirty white marlin in a single day. The fishing is reminiscent of far away tropical destinations and will last for about two weeks right here in our own backyard.
Some boats, especially those out of Virginia Beach, have begun to use live bait for catching whites. Typically, these boats will mark schools of tinker mackerel on the bottom, somewhere between 50 and 80 fathoms. They load large livewells with sophisticated circulation systems by dropping small surgical tube lures (rigged with five or six lures) into the depths and jigging them. Often times, the marlin are right where the bait is being caught and there is no need to run and find them. In recent years this has become somewhat of a contentious method of fishing. Boats that drag natural dead baits contend that fishing with live mackerel is too easy and isn’t the “proper” way to go about loading the riggers with flags. In my opinion, anyway you can catch a fish is the right way. Fishing methods advance every year and if the guys using live bait are catching more fish, than you need to step up your game and learn how to do it! Don’t hate. A flounder in the frying pan tastes the same whether it was caught on a GULP! Swimming Mullet or an actual live mullet. A flag flying on the rigger waves the same in the breeze regardless of how the fish was caught. I make no distinctions and charters should learn to do the same.
Whether you choose to leave your boat in the water for this incredible fall bite, or opt to charter one of the many boats that advertise here in the Coastal Fisherman, there is no better time than the next few weeks to get your butt offshore! Whitey is waiting, wahoo are schooling and the yellowfins are ready for the air conditioning to kick in. Get out there and tell your captain what species you would like to concentrate on. Next thing you know it will be snowing and we will all be dreaming of next spring.
Lance Smith is an outdoor writer and Captain of his family’s boat, “Longfin”.
