November 27th 2012 Playing with the natives.

 

Took a ride with Outdoor Photographer Erich Medenbach today to try and shoot some Native Brookies. Ran into some nice colorful fish. Would have been better with some more light, but the Freezing Rain, Snow and Freezing North East Winds made for a great opportunity to test our Stormrs in a Woodland Setting. Erich got some great shots of the action I got some sick underwater stuff with the new cam. Good day.

 

 

November 15-21st 2012 Misc Black Fish Trips

Getting cold now and the offshore forecast is terrible so we've been picking away at blackfish along Rhodys South Shore. Also played around with one of 6 new cameras we purchased to shoot next years action! Hope some of you reading the blog end up in some of that footage! ;)

November 12th 2012 Black Fishing in the Aftermath with another Nor'easter on the way

 

Had to take care of my girls earlier this weekend, so I couldn’t make it out to the Canyons with my teammates this time around. That being said my brothers Lou and Derek did a great job out there getting into some nice yellows and a large school of migrating Bluefin. Great work guys! Fortune favors the bold! 

 

 

 By Sat night my ladies were doing better so to salvage the weekend I put a Sunday Blackfish ...

trip together with a “fishy” father and son team and long time “East Coasters” Tim and Charles Underhill. Along to help out was ECC Mate Brandon Lake. In addition to our crew, Ecc Mate Nick and our friend Brian would also be heading out on their boats to help get on the bite.

 This would be Tim and Charles first trip for Tog, so I was anxious to put them on some solid action. Forecast was a bit off so we did a little bouncing on our way out past the reef. Once we got there Brandon and I worked together to get us anchored over some nice structure. Once in place, we crabbed up and dropped. The entire crew was using light tackle Trev S series rods. Only moment into it Tim and Brandon were tight on fish, kicking off a nice one hour flurry of action. Another ten minutes later a few boats schemed in on us and dropped anchors all over putting an immediate halt to the bite.

 As if on queue, I got a call from Nick who was fishing with his wife Allie and keeping an eye out for us. “Jack I’m Bailing them, I’ve already limited out” he said. WOW! Brandon ran up to the bow and pulled the anchor and we steamed about a mile north to Nick’s location. He had found a nice piece of rocky bottom with no large structure but a ton of fish and well away from the swarm of other boats. Next to Nick, were my friends and Clients Mark and Kyle Paparelli on their boat and Brian on his Hyrda. All three boats were tight, Nick’s boat was Quadrupled up!!! We set anchor and slid in between Mark and Nick’s vessels beautifully. All rods in and Wham, Insta-bite! We had wave after wave of action the entire day with beautiful fish.

 

We limited out in no time and were throwing back Keeper sized fish like they were Choggies.

 

 

The highlight of the trip was First time Togger Tim landing a toad weighing in at 10.6lbs on some seriously light spinning gear.

 

 

 A nice way to salvage the nice weekend and get some time on the water with great folks!

 

 

 

October 27th 2012 Two Cape Wiffs before the Hurricane

Hurricane Sandy is on her way!

Sometimes it can be difficult to line up open date trips with my Extreme Jig and Pop clients, Those who can make it when the call comes often meet with glory. Those who don't will be given another shot at them by me, as Im not in the business of giving scenic boat tours.

Took a ride up to the cape today with John, Rory and Wade to see if there was any "calm before the storm" tuna rages.....well there was def a calm before the storm, some of the nicest boating conditions I've ever seen up there. However when it came to tuna rages, not so much. Covered a lot of ground hunting literally ran the tank to "e" lol.

That makes two trips for 2012 with out seeing them where they should be. Had one before the canyon trip with Mark same deal. Both of those guys will get a round two with me. Looks like once the weather clears well start heading east and south to find Charlie. Pay back Is gonna be a bitch. Fishing with the Underhills next window for some nice Fall Blackfish.

October 25th 2012 Wrapping up the Canyons in 2012

 

 

Just got back from one of the most spectacular trips to the North East Canyons that I can remember in recent history. Fished with all star crew in: Derek Oneppo, Capt Lou Defusco, Matt Smalley From Gibbs and myself. Battling over 15 Monster Yellowfin, some of the biggest Longfin Albacore I've ever encountered and a short treat from a Giant Wahoo that put on a quick show for us before chewing us off, it would have been a great trip by any measure.

 

 

 But what made this trip even better is that more than 3/4 of the fish taken where the result of jigging and popping with artificial lures.

 

 Hearing reports of storms in the future we moved the trip up a little leaving Tuesday night around 6pm. By 940pm we were into the clear warm water and jockeying around for the evening assault. After deciding on a place to set up the crew was quick to work. Setting up a slick of cut bait rigging a few baits for swords and tuna and setting up the Jig and Pop gear. About and hour or so into the effort one of the Local Hooker rods baited with a cut bait doubled over and Smalley soon found him self tight on a complete pig of a nice Yellowfin. After a nice little battle on a 50 and boating the fish, We snapped a couple pics and got hard to work on the slick and began to Jig our asses off. Almost instantly Derek got smashed on a Ronz Lure and was getting dumped on a VS275 on a Local Hooker Leviathan. Standing right next to him and fishing a Stingo G-ROD Series 5'6" 2pc 350 gram with a Shimano Torsa 16N with a 5oz Silver and Blue Stingo PBJ, I hooked up and we began to tuna tango while trying to keep from tangling in each others aggressive fish. 10 Minutes later two more fish on deck and so began the carnage. The entire night was spent fighting fish, re-rigging, processing and packing tuna on Ice.

 

 

 By the time we got a chance to look at a watch, it was 6am and fish had began to break the surface all around the boat. We changed tactics to Topwater fishing and again we treated to a flurry of action including a great surprise from one of the largest Albacore I have ever landed ( It struck a Green 4x Ronz being ripped across the surface on spinning gear. What a great fight!)

 

 Once the sun came up the bite, slowed down and many of the fish moved deeper into the water column. We set up a quick spread and began to troll our way north before steaming home. Only moments into the troll we had a massive wahoo annihilate the spread and absolutely dump one of the 50's before chewing through our fluoro.At the same time our friend Wade trolling in anothe boat hooked up with and landed a Monster Wahoo over 6 feet long! We reset the spread and trolled for another 20mins before we had a nice 90lb Yellow come rocketing up and smash a Carlson Green Machine bar. Lou hopped on the rod and landed the fish after a nice little battle. After boating and packing that fish we literally had no more room to hold anymore with out having to do some creative shifting. So we pointed the boat north and steamed home.
A fantastic way to begin "a wrap up" of the 2012 offshore season, and a great time on the water with some great dudes.