The Weekly Salvage
(11.20.24) Fishy News from Around the Northeast and Beyond
The maritime rule of salvage has its origin in Roman law, which dictates that one who preserves or improves upon the misplaced property of another is owed compensation, even if the service was not requested. Let’s get out the internet trawler and get to work…
🎙️| SeaBros Podcast: Matt Perachio of TightenUp Charters —> Matt and the Sears Bros give the 2024 post-mortem, talk light-tackle popping tactics, and cover some much-needed conservation tips for those targeting giants during the commercial closure.
🎥 | Kaimana - GT Paradise [Zenaq] —> A visual masterpiece, must watch.
Fishing Reports | OnTheWater - FishermanMag - HullTruth - MAFishReport
Looking for a tackle recommendation? Try GearSay, the first generative AI search tool specifically tailored to helping you find specific gear for a specific purpose. Type in a question or copy & paste text from a fishing report to get instant results.
Twilight of a Tuna Season - Part 2
The tuna gravy train wasn’t done yet, but it would get bumpier. After a basket of B-Dubs finest BBQ wings and 4-hours of shuteye, I woke to the clamorous symphony of an ice-machine whirring and a Fred Again ringtone emanating from between couch cushions. Two and a half days removed from a shower, suspiciously hungover, and without a clue of what zip-code I was in, the sight of split-ring pliers and a white Monster was deeply reassuring.
Neurons slowly realigning as I fumbled open my Siren dry-bag in the attached garage, our gregarious host Dan Rosetto shuffled in. A fixture of the NJ jig n pop scene, Dan is your larger than life Italian cousin that went all in on light-tackle tuna and never looked back. The baits, the swag, the backyard tiki bar, the intel network and loyalty to the game, every dial turned to an eleven out of ten. Already locked into the brainrot jargon that so often functions as social glue on a zero-darker offshore, his greeting of “Let’s bring the BOOM!” set off a chain of events I would only later recognize as hilariously prophetic.
Fast-forward 50-some-miles to the southeast, Dan’s 29 Orion ‘Sushi Grade’ slugging through short-period 5-footers at 25-knots, I’d given up on a beanbag siesta in favor of the first-light watch party. The tunes were firing, the fingers and toes were frozen, but morale was already thawing at the thought of speed-jigging the nooks and structural crannies of NJ’s most infamous wreckage site. As the sun salutation commenced, the radio also crackled to life, a buddy boat alerting us to a pod of humpbacks not far from our destination. “This area is a collection of life almost year-round”, Rosetto shouted over the northerly gust, our sounder indicating a decent band of micro-bait near the thermocline.
Settling into an area with a sprinkling of boats that had also braved the chunky commute, it didn’t take more than a few minutes of jogging around using our eyes and electronics to set the tone for the morning. “There’s another five-BOOMs” Jack wise-cracked, pointing to a pixelated wad of school tuna passing beneath the boat in 140ft, “how do they want it today?” The answer came eight-or-so minutes later, as Jack gave the business to a fish that had slurped his 150g UVT metal slowly dancing off bottom. A few laps around the center-console later, a perfect 62” specimen was boat-side and bled, the pace of high-fives and nonsensical slang increasing as we sensed the bite would only improve.
In summary, it did, each compatriot aboard having a swing or two on these feisty Bluefin in the 45 - 64” class over the next two hours. As the sea-state further degraded, the sounder continued to mark tuna moving incrementally higher off bottom. A rough approximation for just how “aggressive” Bluefin are feeding, their lateral moves soon shifted to show some willingness to chase vertically into the mid-column as well. Sensing another opportunity to test the adaptability of the NLBN, I pitched out a 3oz straight-tail in a Sandeel pattern off the stern and let 150ft of metered PE6 fall off my spool.
While trigonometry was never a strong suit, I had a pretty good feeling my jig was 60-70ft down by the near 45-degree angle coming off the rod-tip as I flipped the bail. I took two full revolutions of the handle and threw in a quick hitch to my retreive, then a 3-second pause, two more cranks and I lost all contact with the bait – He’s running towards me! – I furiously cranked down and as the fish finally made a rapid run to the West I gave him three quick successive jabs to pierce the jawline. Furious, he dumps half of my 14k Saltiga in the next 40-seconds, while I relish the moment of clarity that only comes from knowing that just for a moment, I’ve cracked the code.
It was a proper contrast to the white-knuckled inshore crusade that pushed our gear and instincts to the edge, but there was still an educational element to winning the offshore jigging lottery. Without the pressure to produce, having secured our over/under limit, we took the time for a bit of creativity in cadence and bait selection. Feeling out the fall-rate in different size and model jigs not only helps you ply new angles in the water column, but also helps you develop confidence in retrieves for future trips and scenarios. Especially in the tuna game, when just getting one bite is so often the goal, having the opportunity to get rapid positive feedback on a number of presentations should always be taken advantage of. It was a real-time tuna laboratory that only lasted a few hours, but will afford me plenty of time to reflect on how to make better decisions on the water in 2025.
Check out Jack Burke’s YT Channel and a Recap of Our Day Below.
Yellowfin Shatters Current World Record (SportfishMag) - On a 10-day fishing trip to the Pacific waters of Baja, led by Capt. Justin Fleck of the Excel, a group of anglers set out in search of giant yellowfin tuna. No one can argue that angler Earl Gill IV came out on top, bringing to the boat a jaw-dropping 443-pounder. Now, he might be an IGFA champion. His “super cow,” a rare yellowfin tuna weighing more than 300 pounds, was weighed on a certified IGFA scale and submitted to the IGFA on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2024, in San Diego, California. If approved, his catch would take over as the new all-tackle world record for yellowfin tuna.
Staking-Out Bonefish in the Florida Keys (SportfishMag) - Some sharp-eyed backcountry guides still pole across the flats, but at this stage of his life, Stanczyk prefers a technique known as dead-boating or staking out. “Instead of me hunting them down, I let them find me,” he says. Stanczyk eases his skiff onto a flat where he believes he’ll intercept bonefish, and where the wind and current move in the same direction. He plants his push pole in the sandy bottom and secures the boat to the pole with a rope.
The Case For Big Wooden Plugs (OntheWater) - “Big plugs have been disappearing from the surfcasting shelves since the advent of striper surf spinning over 40 years ago. Plug builders logically saw a bigger future in lures for spinning at about the same time that injection molding’s production advantages became evident in manufacturing. With the exception of the larger Atom swimmers, which were victims of the transition in manufacturing methods and the use of spinning gear, the cost and low demand about killed the big wooden plugs and never permitted their manufacture in plastic castings. Why would anyone spend money tooling up to build plugs for such anachronistic applications as heavy conventional tackle? Who would buy them?”
Slaying Dragons: Canada's Giant Northern Pike (AnglersJournal) - “You can’t make a bad cast here. You will get strikes from all directions, even alongside the boat. You can’t leave a lure in the water, either. They’ll hammer anything shiny — even if it’s not moving — a lesson I learned while trying to take a photo with my phone. I almost lost the phone and the rod. Northern pike clobber everything with a ferocity you don’t get used to. They are not line shy. They are not boat shy. They are the opposite of shy; they are extremely forward and aggressive. The best bites are a foot or so off the gunwale. You know it might happen, you get plenty of follows, but you still jump and yell like a kid when a pike the size of a man’s leg explodes on a lure right next to you. Summer here is short-lived, and the fish need to pack on as much bulk as possible. They don’t waste time. The main food source is a lake herring called cisco.”
Fall Ned Rig Tactics for Deep Water Smallmouth Bass (Wired2Fish) - “The Ned rig is widely regarded as among the best smallmouth bass lures thanks to its ability to trigger bites from bass nearly anytime, anyplace. Quinn explains why the presentation excels for smallmouth bass during the fall. As water temperatures drop, smallmouth consolidate around deeper wintering areas where a heavy yet subtle Ned rig quickly reaches the fish.”
Thanks for reading The Weekly Salvage, until next week!
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