Live from Mississippi.
- Thread starter Jackalope
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Deersurgeon
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Met my neighbor yesterday morning at 2:30 to make a run in his 36 Contender for a run to the shelf to chase Wahoo and yellowfin tuna. We left the dock about 3:30. The plan was to troll baits for wahoo and watch for blowups (fish busting giant bait balls of menhayden) to get on Tuna. It was 34 degrees and we had 98 miles to cover in an open center console. With favorable seas, we'd be on the grounds at sunup. The run out was pretty good and we managed 37 mph. Placing us there about 6am.
We got baits in the water and started trolling around rigs. After about an hour, the reel started screaming, and we landed a nice wahoo after about a 20 min fight.
Not long after, we found the first pogie ball absolutely getting hammered. Thousands of sharks and jack cravelle are absolutely destroying them. Now, the tuna ate in there too but down below and to the sides. The tuna will come absolutely screaming through the mele and bust a bait, often coming out of the water. You'll catch flashes of them zipping by like underwater torpedoes. They use the chaos the sharks create to pick off pogies that get separated or confused; they use their speed to keep out of the jaws of the sharks. You can't see it, but the water below the surface was like a snow globe of tiny fish particles floating around, much like snow. This is acres of them hitting the surface, and that's just the surface, the carnage is 50+ feet deep.
We got baits in the water and started trolling around rigs. After about an hour, the reel started screaming, and we landed a nice wahoo after about a 20 min fight.
Not long after, we found the first pogie ball absolutely getting hammered. Thousands of sharks and jack cravelle are absolutely destroying them. Now, the tuna ate in there too but down below and to the sides. The tuna will come absolutely screaming through the mele and bust a bait, often coming out of the water. You'll catch flashes of them zipping by like underwater torpedoes. They use the chaos the sharks create to pick off pogies that get separated or confused; they use their speed to keep out of the jaws of the sharks. You can't see it, but the water below the surface was like a snow globe of tiny fish particles floating around, much like snow. This is acres of them hitting the surface, and that's just the surface, the carnage is 50+ feet deep.
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The name of the game is to spot birds orthe blowup and hammer down to get there. The blowups only last a few minutes because the pogies do not want to be at the surface. The predators push them to the surface and bust them with nowhere left to go. They go down and they get pushed back up anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile away. You're constantly riding rhe bow, pole in one hand ready to cast, whatever part of the boat you can grab in the other. 900 horses of get up and go to get there.
When you do you cast fat as you can in the heart of the mele and reel as absolutely fast as you humanly can. You have to reel faster than a shark can swim to chase your bait, or react ro snap it as it goes by, and still hope you don't snag one. Sharks are opportunistic, they're not going to chase a fast bait much before getting distracted by other slower bait. The tuna on the otherhand are laser focused missiles capable of 50mph speeds. They hang out below or arpund, set their sights on a bait and fly in to hammer it. They too rely on speed to keep out of a sharks jaws and will blow up right in the middle of them like a 200lb football. Once hooked you have to get them away from all those sharks or they'll get eaten. This means letting the fish run and following with the boat keeping a tight line until you're far enough away that they sharks stay occupied with the pogies.
Here's the rig. Big spinning reel with 25lbs of drag, 80lb braid, 6' or 80lb fluerocarbon leader to a 2oz jig head with a 6-8 inch paddletail. Extra heavy rod.
I casted this rig probably 200 times yesterday. I hooked one early that made his initial 150 foot screaming run and popped off with some head shakes. I hooked another and lost him after about a 20 minute fight where a shark cut the line (likely targeting the fish and missed hitting rhe line)
When you do you cast fat as you can in the heart of the mele and reel as absolutely fast as you humanly can. You have to reel faster than a shark can swim to chase your bait, or react ro snap it as it goes by, and still hope you don't snag one. Sharks are opportunistic, they're not going to chase a fast bait much before getting distracted by other slower bait. The tuna on the otherhand are laser focused missiles capable of 50mph speeds. They hang out below or arpund, set their sights on a bait and fly in to hammer it. They too rely on speed to keep out of a sharks jaws and will blow up right in the middle of them like a 200lb football. Once hooked you have to get them away from all those sharks or they'll get eaten. This means letting the fish run and following with the boat keeping a tight line until you're far enough away that they sharks stay occupied with the pogies.
Here's the rig. Big spinning reel with 25lbs of drag, 80lb braid, 6' or 80lb fluerocarbon leader to a 2oz jig head with a 6-8 inch paddletail. Extra heavy rod.
I casted this rig probably 200 times yesterday. I hooked one early that made his initial 150 foot screaming run and popped off with some head shakes. I hooked another and lost him after about a 20 minute fight where a shark cut the line (likely targeting the fish and missed hitting rhe line)
