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Monday, February 27, 2012

How to Find and Catch Small Blues for Tuna Bait

By Captain Ryan Collins


With the exception of awful weather, finding and catching, transporting and storing healthy live bait was quite possibly the most complicated giant tuna obstacle for myself and my crew this past year. I'm pleased to state that as yet this fall, the news on the live bait front is much more encouraging.

This past week I headed the Miss Loretta all the way down Cape Cod to Lewis Bay, just outside the Hyannis Marina. My sportfishing colleague had put together a bluefish trip in Lewis at an earlier time in the week, and stumbled upon some ideal size blues that were all over 2 inch baby bunker. Our hopes were certainly set high for a successful tuna bait trip.

I was happy to find that, the open public boat ramp at Lewis Bay is magnificent. It's a concrete ramp, with a perfectly conditioned newly constructed dock in addition to a great deal of open area to operate a pickup and trailers. Moreover, there was no service fee. I am betting free of cost entry was in fact a post-Labor Day miracle, and most likely isn't the norm at Lewis Bay. Anyway, I'm not complaining!

Promptly after searching all-around we located the biomass of blues stacked up in 7-18 ft of h2o. The pods of snapper and rat blues relocated up and down the channel edge, but there ended up being so many of them, to the point that when we lost track of them, it did not take long for us to zone back in. The fastest action took place as soon as the current started moving in. The fishing slowed down very quickly as soon as the tide started to come to a halt, at just about noon time.

We put up with a large amount of 4-8 inch bluefish which are just too small to use as giant tuna bait. Even so, for virtually every dozen unersize blues we hooked, we caught one longer blue-suitable for flying under the kite. It was evident that that anytime we found a tight school of small bunker, there were bigger blues in the 12-18 inch range underneath them.

Best lure for the very small bluefish was a gold 1 " spoon. The thing casts extremely well on 6 pound line, and performs remarkably well. Most productive lure for for the bigger blues was a 3 inch floating, blue Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow.

I am certainly hoping that this area will end up loaded up with giant tuna bait size bluefish throughout the fall. It would be terrific to maintain a well-performing spot to find live bait. Even when we certainly have to travel a little bit to make it there.




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