Hatteras, North Carolina

Blue Fin Tuna with Anthony Warren

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

Like any great vacation, sadly, they all came to an end. This trip is no different although I can truly say it's been an absolutely amazing experience. Today's weather was the best of the trip; no bar to speak of, 2' swells, a gentle breeze and beautiful sunrise. Like yesterday's run, today was a long one. With the lack of Northerly winds blowing, the fish are migrating up the coast and so we followed. It took about 2 ½ hours to get to the area we wanted to start our hunt and the pressure from the rest of the fleet was much less today. Like the other days, we deployed our spread of Ballyhoo and waited for the action. About 2 hours into the troll, a school of Yellow fin's came in and crashed the Silver Horde Yamashita Squid Teaser that Mike (our deckhand) had made the night before. Two of the Yellow fin's made the mistake of biting the rigged Ballyhoo's and it was game time for Stephen and Weddy. The heavy Blue Fin tackle made quick work of these 25lb fish and then in was back to searching for the big fish. Our captain Dan starting picking up fish on the sonar from 90'-150' so he decided to start throwing chunk baits in an effort to raise these fish. It didn't take long for a Blue Fin to dine on our feast and Weddy was locked in battle. After a 30 minute battle, we tagged and released her fish.

Back to the chunking… this is a very effective and hands on way to get these fish to bite. It requires teamwork between the deckhand and crew to pull it off successfully. Here is how we pulled it off on our last Blue Fin of the trip:

Today we had 4 anglers on the boat, Dan the Captain and Mike the deckhand. Dan is on top of the flybridge keeping the boat pointed in the right direction as we drift at 4 knots in the Gulf Stream current. He is also looking for fish boiling on our chunk slick. Stephen was in the chair holding the rod while the reel was in free spool with the clicker on. It is VERY important for this person to have one hand on the drag lever so he (she) can deploy drag when the deckhand tells us too. Failure to do this would end up in a massive backlash and an upset crew. Mike's job was to pull off line at the appropriate speed so the hooked piece of mullet drifted back with the rest of the bait that was being thrown overboard. This brings us to the chummer… this person has the glorious job of throwing cut up piece of mullet over every 10-15 seconds. This along with the fast drift, creates the slick of chunked bait to draw in the aggressive feeding tuna. Weddy was in charge of keeping Stephen's fighting chair pointed in the proper direction so when the fish hit, the line was properly lined up to go over the roller guides. While fishing this technique, we keep 2 Ballyhoo's out; 1 on each outrigger. My job was to keep the cockpit clear and add a second set of eyes to watch out for signs of feeding tuna. This kind of teamwork paid off and Stephen got to catch the final Blue Fin tuna of our trip.

Details of the day:

2 Yellowfin Tuna, each about 25lbs
2 Blue Fin hook up's.
2 Blue Fin's tagged and released.
The fish were in the 150lb class today…. Real bruisers!
Water temperature was a pretty flat 70 degrees most of the day.
The fish were further East today in over 6000' of water.

Tallies for the week:
17 for 27 on Blue Fin Tuna ranging in size from 120lbs-250lbs.
4 for 5 on Yellow Fin Tuna ranging in size from 25lbs-30lbs.
1 for 1 on Wahoo.

I would like to say thanks to Dan and Mike on the Tuna Duck. These guys are great to fish with and are excellent teachers of this fishery. www.tunaduck.com I also want to thank my very good friends Stephen Seal, Del and Weddy Stephens. This trip wouldn't have happened without you guys and I hope we can make this an annual event.

A beautiful sunrise off Cape Hatteras.

There's me helping Mike keep the deck in order as Stephen and Weddy fight the Yellow Fin Tuna.

Weddy's Blue Fin Tuna getting released at the boat.

Stephen's Blue Fin Tuna having some dentistry work done before it swims off.

Today was the most gorgeous day on the water yet; we woke up to clear skies and virtually no wind.. Even the bar crossing was easy! Del, Weddy and I were excited to have Stephen back on the boat with us since he missed all the mid-week madness. Our plan was to have him make up for lost time by fighting as many fish as he could before his arms fell off because that's what good friend do!

Our run out to the massive temperature break was smooth and although the breeze off the 45 degree water was chilly, you could tell it wasn't going to be cold for long. The fishing grounds today reminded me of the CR Buoy during Salmon season out of Ilwaco, there were boats everywhere! At one point, I counted 26 boats on the hunt and I'm sure there were plenty more just out of site. We set up our spread in area less populated with boats and after 45 minutes of trolling, we landed a double of 30lb Yellow Fin Tuna. Things quieted down after that so we decided to keep heading east to get away from the fleet. This is when we saw something straight off the Discovery Channel, a school of 4lb Blue Fish balled up and being attacked by Blue Fin tuna. Once our captain saw that, we changed up tactics and drifted near the bait ball in the 4 knot current while throwing chunk bait. The fish soon cooperated and Stephen was doing battle on first Blue Fin Tuna. The action continued steady, at one point we had 3 tuna on at once. I've done the "Tuna Dance" several times before while Albacore fishing but never with 80 Wide reels and 22lbs of drag!

Details of the day:

2 Yellow Fin Tuna, each about 30lbs.
6 Blue Fin hook ups.
1 Blue Fin broke off.
4 Blue Fin tagged and released.
1 Blue Fin kept, 181lbs!
Water temperature was 68-70 degrees
Most fish were hooked in depths over 5,000 feet of water.

Tomorrow is our last day on the water and I really don't know how it could get any better. this has been such an amazing trip!

We had a day off today so we did some site seeing. this place is really cool. There is so much history here, on and off the water. Naturally, I'm drawn to the unique boats they build here. In our ventures, we ran across a boat yard with a few of these machines on the hard so I had to snap some shots for you guys.

The Hatteras Lighthouse: Need I say more? Some interesting facts can be seen at: http://www.hatteras-nc.com/light/

The Carolina Flare: This needs no explanation. there are several custom boat builders back here and they all seem to have this trait. As you can imagine, the bows really knock down the spray.

The single engine: Yup, that's right.. a LOT of these battle wagons have a single screw. You can also see that many of these boats have a relatively flat transom. The flat transom really minimizes how much these boats rock-n-roll at a drift and less power is needed to push these boats to a respectable speed. If you look between the struts and the first zinc, you can see a second but smaller rudder. This rudder allows them to "steer" the boat in reverse with a single screw. I wish my boat had this.. some of these boats have a bow thruster but quite a few don't. These guys can slam the boat in the slip like nobody's business..

Islander stern shot: Big twin diesels move this boat along. notice the lack of deadrise.

Islander: Another gorgeous custom Carolina Sport Fisher. I just love the lines on these boats.

The Tuna Duck: This is the boat we've been fishing out of all week. It's powered by a single 890hp Detroit Diesel. This boat is not a finished boat meaning that the inside is all business. You're not going to find granite counter tops or HD TV on this boat. It has 2 long, cushioned bunks to sit on and a marine head. This 50' boat only weighs 25,000lbs so it can easily cruise at 24 knots and he gets about 1mpg doing so.

House's on stilts: That seems to be the norm here due to the storm surges from hurricanes. This house caught my eye, notice the Sailfish carving in front of the stairs. cool stuff! We'll be back on the water tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed!!

Today started just like the others with one exception; today was cold! The air temperature was hanging in the low 40's and the 15-20 knot Northerly winds put the wind chill down into the 30's! I learned from our captain that when the North winds blow here, the Labrador Current that starts up in the Arctic Ocean and flows south around Newfoundland gets pushed all the way down here bringing nutrient rich cold water. The water temperature near shore is now down to 43.5 degrees. We ran about 25 miles to the East today and that is where we ran into the Gulf Stream, the water temperature jumped 25 degrees in the matter of a foot! It was the most distinct blue/green line I have ever seen. The contrast was so dramatic that the water would smoke where the two currents met.

Once we hit the area of the Gulf Stream we deployed 6 lines, 5 of them had Islander Sea Star Skirts with Ballyhoo, the other was a naked Ballyhoo. It only took minutes for the first explosion this day and the action was non-stop. We had doubles twice today most importantly, we suffered much fewer break offs today. We decided to stop fishing at 1pm today and the tallies went like this:

11 hook-ups
2 fish broke off
2 fish came unhooked
6 were tagged and released (2 of them were 200lb class fish)
1 fish kept - 57", 130 lbs.

The strike of the day was a the biggest fish, it hit the short shotgun rod like a giant bass hits a top water plug! This monster came clear out the water as it struck the bait.. I only wish we had a video camera rolling on that bait and that exact time.

Tagged and getting ready to remove the circle hook

Here is one of the big fish of the day coming to the surface after a strenuous battle.

Another fish about to get tagged

Here is the piggy of the day.. That is an enormous head shot!

I like this shot. we just tagged the fish, now we need to remove the hook.

Del, Weddy and myself with the fish we kept. Tomorrow is an off day for us but we plan to be back at it on Saturday and Sunday.

Cheers! Anthony

Day 2 on the water:

The forecast finally cooperated with us today and we made the most of it. A couple friends from Portland showed up on Sunday and they were itching to get into the mix with us. With the recent low pressure systems moving out, it was time to start over and search for the schools of fish. That being said, we decided to split up our group of 5 into 2 boats to cover some additional water and this proved to be deadly.

The morning started off with some adrenaline pumping after an interesting bar crossing, breaking 10' swells are not fun even in a 50' Sportfisher. Once we sneaked over the bar the ocean laid down to 5' swells at 11 seconds. It was a gorgeous day out there and our hopes were high.

We started by hitting a few high spots with our butterfly jigs but that didn't produce anything. Next step was deploying the 6 skirted Ballyhoo's that were ever so carefully attached to the Shimano Tiagra 80 wides.. Then we waited.. And waited. nothing. Zilch. Nada. I looked at my watch and it was 1:45, I was thinking what are we going to do the rest of the week.

Then finally, our friends on the Carolinian called saying they found the Blue Fin's and they were only 12 miles to the north. We frantically picked up our gear and headed off to the coordinates.

The enthusiasm was back! We get to the spot, drop the gear in the water and within 2 minutes we had doubles crashing our spread! These fish make one hell of a splash when the CRASH the baits. a few minutes later, both fish had broke off. Reset, back at it. This went on for 2 hours and by the time 4 o'clock rolled around, Del, his wife Weddy and I had each landed a beautiful Blue Fin tuna. These fish are amazingly powerful.. I can't even explain it in words.

We decided to keep the first fish that was landed which happened to be my fish, the others were tagged and released to fight another day.

What can I say, I had to jump on this bad boy!

At the dock, it measured out to 59" and 142lbs.

I love Blue Fin Tuna!!!

Our buddy's Bud Hosner and Dick Crosley onboard the Carolinian.

That's me getting ready to tag Weddy's Blue Fin Tuna

Check out the size of that beast!

Weddy's tagged Blue Fin. Check out that mouth!

Del's tagged Blue Fin.

Day 1

Well it was an interesting day for sure.. The forecast was not exactly peachy but we decided to run for it. We fished in 10'-12' seas at 10 seconds, 15-20 knot winds and believe it or not, it was pretty comfortable in the 50' Custom North Carolina Sport Fisher. The massive flared bows on these boats really knock down the spray. A total of 5 boats fished out of Hatteras today and no Blue Fins were hooked up. We fared better than most, we managed a nice Wahoo to go along with a few False Albacores. The good news is we are expecting better conditions tomorrow and after today's search by the fleet, we are going to make a longer run and hope for better results.

This is a shot of us crossing over the bar in the am. I have a whole new respect for the Army Core of Engineers who constantly maintain our waters. Out here, the shoals shift constantly making for a hairy ride.

My first Wahoo.. WOO HOO!!

Adding my West Coast flare to the East Coast.. J

Coming back over the bar in the fog with a nasty following sea.

This clown had to follow us in because he didn't have radar.

Some really cool scenery.. I like this place!

Entrance to Cape Hatteras Marina