Mr. Bluefish

There are a lot of anglers that do not enjoy catching bluefish. Not me. I love catching these fish. What a great fight. Most fisherman (including me) are drawn to the challenge of cacthing a trophy striped bass. I think that most large stripers see better, are picky eaters and do not like to move much unless they know it will be a worthwhile meal. If I had to chose catching schoolie stripers or catching bluefish I may chose the stripers just due to their lack of teeth, but for the fun of it I would probably want the fight of the bluefish. I admit that most of the time there is not that much science that goes into catching bluefish. Still, pound for pound it is one of the best fights to be had. There are two great bluefish stories that i would like to tell you about.

1. I was in 5th or 6th grade and my dad and I went fishing at our favorite surf spot at Craigville Beach. I remember it being in mid to late October. We had caught a few fish the night before, but nothing too crazy. In fact, to save some money we cut up chunks of the small bluefish that we had caught the night before to fish with on this day. Soon after we got there the water began to bubble. An absolutely massive school of menhaden was being pushed towards the beach by an equally massive school of large bluefish. The tough part about this fishing is that there was so much bait it was hard to get the blues to choose our offerings. The menhaden were jumping onto the shore so we livelined a couple of these and caught a few fish. We had bait for the rest of the season too. I had the smaller of the surf rods and decided to not use a whole menhaden this time and I used some of the bluefish from the night before. I remember casting out in front of me about 10 feet and BAM! I fought this fish for what seemed like an eternity. It was the biggest bluefish that my father and I had ever seen. Our guess was that it was 16-20 pounds. We had caught our fair share of 12-14 pounders over the years and this was much bigger.

2. This past fall before the time change the sea forecast was good and I decided to take the kids out on the Whaler to do some fishing even though it was a school night. Christine was away at a meeting so what better way to be Mr. Mom than to take everyone fishing. The kids were a little apprehensive, but somehow I got them to agree on the trip. They admit that it was a good decision to go. We put in the boat in West Falmouth Harbor and headed North. The water was like glass. As we headed North we noticed it looked like it was snowing over near New Silver Beach. It was birdtastic. I have never in my life seen so many birds in one spot. Plus, the amount of fish was unbelievable. From the outermost point of New Silver Beach all the way to the Norhtern most side of OldSilver Beach there were literally thousands of birds with fish pounding bait all over the place. It was just a monstrous feeding frenzy. There were mostly bluefish in the 4-8 lb. range, but I am pretty sure that I saw some albies and/or bonito mixed in. At one point Thomas had a snag in his reel and when I pulled up the lure there was a black sea bass on the end. This was a great trip because for most of the time I set the kids up with top water plugs and they were able to do the most fun kind of fishing there is. Usually when I fish with them I approach a school and do not get that close as to not spook the school. I would cast, get hooked up and let one of the kids reel in the fish. Not today though. I was able to turn off the engine and the fish were all around us. The kids could cast for themselves, hook up and reel in their own fish. I would say each kid brought 20 blues to the boat. It was all I could do to keep up with unhooking them. When we left the frenzy was still going strong and a few other boats had joined the excitement. Incredible.