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[Ken Neill]

We finally had some beautiful weather and anglers made the most of it. Boats fishing out of Oregon Inlet caught yellowfin tuna, blackfin tuna and some impressive wahoo. Offshore boats out of Virginia did not do well with the pelagic fish but did very well with tilefish and wreckfish. Large bluefish have arrived on the ocean wrecks. Flounder fishing is very good around the Triangle Wrecks. Sea bass are abundant there also but they must be released. Tautog action is good at the CBBT and over other structures in the bay. Speckled Trout and puppy drum fishing is very good in Rudee and Lynnhaven Inlets and in the Elizabeth River. School striped bass are being caught at all of the area bridges. Some larger fish are being caught on live bait over the tubes of the CBBT. A good early sign has been feeding rockfish under working birds throughout the lower bay. These fish are still small but it is good to see the bird activity.

Our next club meeting will be on November 17. Our speaker will be Captain Blake Hayden. Capt. Hayden is an expert at catching gator speckled trout. His focus will be the Elizabeth River trophy fishery.

For everyone interested in grouper, tilefish, and other offshore bottom fish, there is a meeting at the VMRC building at 6 PM, Monday, November 16. This will concern proposed new regulations to our south and the possibility of extending these regulations into our waters.

Another state-record blueline tilefish has been approved. The fish weighed in at 23 pounds, 5 ounces. This monster fish was caught by Michael Adkins on July 4. He caught the fish near the Norfolk Canyon.

Nov. 9, John Hunt fished out of Oregon Inlet. They caught 14 blackfin tuna and a 51-pound wahoo. They had a mako shark sky out of the water in the middle of their spread. It was not after their baits but was chasing the blackfins which were attacking the baits.

Nov. 7-9, We finally got a calm weekend so we made the most of it. Left out of Rudee Inlet Saturday morning. The plan was to spend the night shark fishing. We headed south, all the way to The Point. We put out a trolling spread and within minutes, tuna were hitting everything. Three lines came tight which were plenty as there were only three of us. We managed to boat all of them, yellowfin tuna in the 35-pound class. I made the comment that 2 more times like that, we would have our limit and what were we going to do until dark? Of course, that was a stupid thing to say. We did not have another tuna bite the rest of the afternoon. We set up for our evening drift inside of The Point and drifted east. We had stuff for swordfish, tuna chunking, and of course shark stuff. We started out putting out a couple of swordfish baits. We had the lines taken from our hands as were feeding them out. Sharks were already there so we started shark fishing. We put out some chum and started to catch sharks as fast as we could re-rig and get a bait in the water. I’m not good at identifying sharks. These were just sharks, dusky, bull or other sharks. We did not catch any of the easy to identify sharks. I expected a lot of blue sharks based on long-line reports in the area but we did not see any. These sharks ranged from 4 to 8 feet long. Wes Blow caught the largest, about 200 pounds. Bob Manus had a big fish on but it was on one of the swordfish rigs and after an impressive run, it bit through the monofilament leader. This was Bob’s first fishing trip since back surgery. It probably was not a good first trip. I think he is going to need some more surgery. He sure was making some funny noises while fighting those sharks. We drifted on out past the 1000 fathom curve. The sharks stayed with us the entire night. Sunday morning, we started trolling again. There was a lot of life around but we only caught false albacore. We picked up early for the run back to Rudee. I was a little concerned about fuel. We had run to The Point before and we have done plenty of overnight trips but we had never run to The Point for an overnighter. It turned out we had plenty of fuel. Monday morning, I fished the Triangle Wrecks. Everyone else was at work except the Poquoson School kids were out of school. I picked up 14-year-old Hunter Southall on the way to Virginia Beach. We caught some nice flounder which went in the cooler. We also caught some nice sea bass which we had to let go. Big bluefish are out there as some of the sea bass were bit in half. Time to go fishing for bluefish. The flounder we caught were 18 to 26 inches long with most of them in the 22-24 inch range.

Nov. 8, Charles and Hunter Southall found some working birds near Bluefish Rock. They caught school rockfish up to 25 inches.

Nov. 8, Ric Burnley fished the Triangle Wrecks. They caught flounder, sea bass, and large bluefish.

Nov. 8, David Brabrand fished out of Oregon Inlet. They caught 2 blackfin tuna, 3 dolphin, and a shark. They got to watch a group of spinner sharks putting on a display.

Nov. 8, Rick Wineman fished the Triangle Wrecks for bluefish. They caught sea bass. They then moved to the Ocean Venture. There they found plenty of bluefish up to 34 inches long.

Nov. 8, Danny Forehand fished for tautog on a wreck inside the bay. They caught some tautog, a whole bunch of oyster toads and a couple of nice puppy drum, 23 and 25 inches long.

Nov. 7-8, Mike Avery did an offshore, overnight trip. They stop at the Triangle Wrecks where they caught sea bass and flounder. They then moved on out to the Ocean Venture where they found a lot of bluefish and more sea bass. All of the sea bass were released. They then ran out to the Norfolk Canyon area and trolled until dark. They then set up and drifted for swordfish all night. They did not catch anything trolling or drifting. In the morning, they went bottom fishing. Mike found a group of nice golden tilefish. They caught 8 goldens and left them biting.

Nov. 7 and 8, Dr. Bob Allen wire-lined the tube between the 3rd and 4th islands of the CBBT. They caught a bunch of rockfish up to 25 inches long.

Nov. 7, Rob Graham trolled the James River Bridge. They caught rockfish up to 27.5 inches long.

Nov. 5, Dave and Chris Boyce fished the Elizabeth River. They caught speckled trout up to 24.5 inches long.

Nov. 1, Martin Freed and Ruta Vaskys did some tautog fishing up in the bay. The action was hot and heavy with tog weighing up to 8 pounds. In an hour of fishing, they kept 8 large males. All of the female tog they caught were released.

Nov. 1, Mac McCormick and Richard Schultz fished the MMBT. They caught all of the school-sized striped bass that they wanted by casting curly-tailed grubs.

Nov. 1, Barclay Shepard fished for tautog at Back River Reef. They caught 8 tautog up to 22 inches long.

Oct. 30, Wes Blow caught a bunch of small striped bass at the MMBT.

Oct. 30, Rick Wineman and Jody Linthicum fished the CBBT. They caught a few small rockfish. They found some more back near the mouth of Back River under working birds. They caught fish up to 24 inches long.

Oct. 23, Barclay Shepard fished around the Norfolk Canyon. They did not find any tuna. They did some bottom fishing and caught tilefish, hake, blackbelly rosefish and bluefish. They did not catch any grouper or wreckfish.

Oct. 22, John Hunt fished out of Oregon Inlet with several other boats. John said everyone caught some fish, maybe about a half-dozen each on average. John caught 4 yellowfin tuna, 2 blackfin tuna, a dolphin and a bunch of false albacore.

Oct. 21 and 22, Steve Martin fished out of Hatteras and Oregon Inlet. They caught a wahoo, 2 blackfin tuna, and a yellowfin tuna.

Oct. 22, Wes Blow fished around the CBBT. He caught some tautog and even a keeper sea bass.

Oct. 21, Martin Freed and Ruta Vaskys did some wreck fishing about 10 miles out of Wachapreague. They caught triggerfish, sheepshead, tautog, and a bunch of sea bass which they released.

Oct. 17, Chris Boyce fished the Elizabeth River. They trolled for speckled trout. They caught 27 speckled trout up to 22 inches long.

Oct. 9, we went out on one of our trips for science. The target was young-of-the-year bluefin tuna. We fished around the Weather Buoy/Cigar area. We caught plenty of baby tuna but they were all blackfins. We also caught a skipjack and a bunch of false albacore. We had a couple of wahoo bite-offs.

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[Ken Neill]

[Ken Neill]

That is John Hunt and his big wahoo.