HisDoghouse
10-17-2007, 10:02 AM
As requested in another thread, here's my report on a recent offshore trip off the coast of Virginia.
We started our offshore adventure at 4:30 when I got underway from my slip with Mate Susie and assistant mate Mike. We headed to my new slip at Bay Point to pick up my party for the day. We got underway at 0515 and started to head east in a 10 – 15 knot wind out of the NNW and 3’ seas. The trip out was quite nice, despite the occasional chemical releases by one of the party in the enclosed helm area. The electronics worked superbly, with the AIS displaying targets on the chart well before they were picked up on radar. As we headed east, the winds didn’t moderate as predicted by fishweather.com, but with this boat the ride was great. My old boat (a Wellcraft 290 Coastal) would not have been as comfortable in these seas, and we cruised out at 21 – 22 knots.
We arrived in the vicinity of Wayne’s World at 0840, and put our first lines in at 0850. We were trolling in 71 – 72 degree water with scattered weed. On the radio we heard of occasional mahi and wahoo being taken, but not much else. Shortly after 9 am we had some action in our spread as we watched a white marlin knock at one of our baits. Despite our best efforts, that one got his breakfast and wandered off. We trolled through the tip of the Norfolk Canyon and made our way past some lobster trap buoys along the south wall without any success. We did see a pair of sunfish next to a buoy, but there was not much else until we pulled lines in at noon.
Our next stop was to try for some tiles at the north side of the canyon. In about 50 fathoms of water we saw some marks on the bottom and we commenced to drop to them. Tilefish live on the bottom in depths between 30 and 100 fathoms. We were using 28 ounces of lead on a two hook bottom rigs baited with squid strips on reels spooled with braid. The thinness of the braid is necessary to help keep the weights on the bottom as we were drifting at just over one knot. Mono line of the same strength would have been too thick and would have required much more line out to hold the bottom. Ten minutes after the first line hit the bottom we had the skunk off the boat with a nice black sea bass. The action was slow but consistent with sea bass and blueline tilefish until we called it a day at 3 pm. We ended up with ten sea bass from 12 – 16 inches, and eight blueline tilefish from 19 – 28 inches long.
Our trip back was great, with the winds down to the predicted 5 knots and the seas dropping off to a nice swell out of the north. Three hours later after cruising at 23 – 25 knots, we were at the dock and began the process of cleaning up – both fish and the boat. Water temperature at the dock was a comfortable 72 degrees (thank god), a perfect temperature to cut an abandoned dock line from around a prop.
While we didn’t get anything on the troll, we had a great time. Let’s hope the temps up north drop to help motivate the tuna to head our way soon.
We started our offshore adventure at 4:30 when I got underway from my slip with Mate Susie and assistant mate Mike. We headed to my new slip at Bay Point to pick up my party for the day. We got underway at 0515 and started to head east in a 10 – 15 knot wind out of the NNW and 3’ seas. The trip out was quite nice, despite the occasional chemical releases by one of the party in the enclosed helm area. The electronics worked superbly, with the AIS displaying targets on the chart well before they were picked up on radar. As we headed east, the winds didn’t moderate as predicted by fishweather.com, but with this boat the ride was great. My old boat (a Wellcraft 290 Coastal) would not have been as comfortable in these seas, and we cruised out at 21 – 22 knots.
We arrived in the vicinity of Wayne’s World at 0840, and put our first lines in at 0850. We were trolling in 71 – 72 degree water with scattered weed. On the radio we heard of occasional mahi and wahoo being taken, but not much else. Shortly after 9 am we had some action in our spread as we watched a white marlin knock at one of our baits. Despite our best efforts, that one got his breakfast and wandered off. We trolled through the tip of the Norfolk Canyon and made our way past some lobster trap buoys along the south wall without any success. We did see a pair of sunfish next to a buoy, but there was not much else until we pulled lines in at noon.
Our next stop was to try for some tiles at the north side of the canyon. In about 50 fathoms of water we saw some marks on the bottom and we commenced to drop to them. Tilefish live on the bottom in depths between 30 and 100 fathoms. We were using 28 ounces of lead on a two hook bottom rigs baited with squid strips on reels spooled with braid. The thinness of the braid is necessary to help keep the weights on the bottom as we were drifting at just over one knot. Mono line of the same strength would have been too thick and would have required much more line out to hold the bottom. Ten minutes after the first line hit the bottom we had the skunk off the boat with a nice black sea bass. The action was slow but consistent with sea bass and blueline tilefish until we called it a day at 3 pm. We ended up with ten sea bass from 12 – 16 inches, and eight blueline tilefish from 19 – 28 inches long.
Our trip back was great, with the winds down to the predicted 5 knots and the seas dropping off to a nice swell out of the north. Three hours later after cruising at 23 – 25 knots, we were at the dock and began the process of cleaning up – both fish and the boat. Water temperature at the dock was a comfortable 72 degrees (thank god), a perfect temperature to cut an abandoned dock line from around a prop.
While we didn’t get anything on the troll, we had a great time. Let’s hope the temps up north drop to help motivate the tuna to head our way soon.