The Weekly Salvage
(9.22.22) Fishy News from Around the Northeast and Beyond
The maritime law of salvage has its origins in Roman law, which dictated that one who preserved or improved upon the misplaced property of another was owed compensation, even if the service was not requested. Let’s get out the ole inter-webs seiner and get to work…
Fishing Reports: OnTheWater / Fisherman Mag / SaltyCape / Redtop
Podcast Breakdown of the Week: Bluefin Tuna w/ Capt. Dom Petrarca (OnTheWater)
The path-ways / ‘game-trails’ that BFT take around Cape Cod & Islands haven’t changed that much, but bait-cycles have always been the primary driver of Tuna ‘catch-a-bility’ historically. —> Abundant years for sand-eels (like 2022) and half-beaks tend to align with more targetable recreational fish, whereas seasons dominated by mackerel seem to make the fish more mobile and less surface-oriented.
2007-2010 was ‘easy’ fishing…but the 2012-2013 seasons saw a transition to less topwater and schooling action, requiring more deep-water jigging and structure-focused tactics. —> This year seems to be a ‘healthier’ mix: smaller fish more active and higher in the column due to longer-duration sand-eel feeds…larger fish still more bottom-oriented but staying in the same areas.
Technology: Braided line (for reel capacity) was the catalyst for the light-tackle tuna boom in early-00s, but sonar / down-scan in last 10yrs has changed light-tackle deep-water tactics tremendously. —> More visual cues and data-points = more confidence in stalking productive areas and then dialing in on a specific presentation.
Modern Intel Gathering: Multiple Tuna, Bait, and a Jig Responsibility PSA: having the right equipment and connections is essential to pursuing BFT the ‘right way’. You need the right class of reels, rods, line, connections, angler technique and drag pressure to subdue and ‘respect’ this fish or you shouldn’t be doing it at all. —> Dom has the 1-hour ‘pop it or stop it’ rule, meaning that if you haven’t been able to make any measurable progress on a fish in under an hour, your likelihood of success is next to nothing, while you are doing the fish no favors.
Release mortality: it can be ‘very low’ as long as you are swimming them back to ‘full color’ —> He’s caught ‘darted’ fish, fish with lures still attached, fish with broken jaws. Tuna are survivalists, but there’s no reason to take that as a reason to be reckless with your catch & release methods.
Lures: The greatest advance in lure technology is thru-wire construction, almost everything else is ‘accoutrements’ …silhouette is most important for matching forage. —> Dom has primarily a two Lure System: the HD RonZ (sand-eel silhouette) & Deep Force Pt. Jude Jig (whiting, herring, mackerel, etc)
Deep Force Pt. Jude Jig (Green, Blue Mack, Sardine and Pearl Red) Intra-day Movements: Smaller fish key on sunlight, tend to travel to Northeast as sun rises, into deeper water…then they return Southwest as sun starts to fall. Tuna make 'linear’ moves over days/weeks but travel by the minute/hour in wide circles …like a conveyor belt. Bait ‘blooms’/dispersion during lunar phases creates foraging pathways, like a supply chain experiencing bottlenecks and free-passage.
Dom thinks 2022 was a “Northern Arrival” year for Cape Cod, BFT coming into our waters from the Eastern Canyons and Northern Channel —> Purely anecdotally, I can recall Canadian and Maine contacts seeing fish as early as the second week of June this year, at least two weeks prior to the P-town bite commencing.
State of the Tuna Union: The species is in a great place. The science says it’s doing well, but there’s some logical fallacies involved in the scientific analysis…1) a two (or three) stock spawning model is probably too simple to explain a globally migratory fish like BFT. The conditions needed to spawn likely occur throughout dozens of regions (Europe, Africa, US, and South America), and it’s anyone’s guess whether fish return to the same spawning areas year after year given how far they travel.
All Eggs in One Basket: Dom only does jig and pop. No bait-fishing, no trolling, no other species. By limiting himself to one mode of catching, the ‘all or nothing’ mentality forces him to run further and longer than most without stopping to think about switching tactics. Stubborn? Yes. Effective? Also Yes.
Quote of the Episode: “Finding bluefin tuna brings out the hunter in me. It touches that innate thing that society beats out of you when you're a kid so you don't end up on the 11 o'clock news.”
Local Knowledge: Storms, the commercial closure and weddings (🤦) have conspired to delay my next tuna funeral until October, a month unparalleled in the annals of Cape Cod angling. It’s a segment of the season that is not only historically productive, but uniquely rewarding in the sense that successes are usually ‘earned’. Whether it’s the temperamental weather patterns that demand constant attention or early sunsets that allude to the season’s finiteness, October has a distinct “4th quarter” feeling. It’s this sense of urgency that seems to raise the stakes on every trip that starts in the crisp dawn…
Longest Fish Fight Ever Documented (SportFishMag) - Using 100-pound test line, 400-pound test leader, Resha battled the Blue Marlin (estimated to be ~1500lbs) for 32-hours, 40-minutes pursuing the IGFA all-tackle record. —> Like the MLB taking steroids out of baseball, the strictness of the IGFA standards has made fishing ‘statisticians’ generally insufferable and possibly led to worse outcomes for game species themselves. Was it really necessary for this guy to piss himself and get fed meals while sitting in a fighting chair (which is silly in itself) to get his name on a plaque? Was it worth exhausting this magnificent animal to death (just to chafe it off) because no one was allowed to touch the leader?
The Biggest Roosterfish Ever Caught (SaltwaterSportsman) - Vicious strikes, beautiful colors, and easy access from the surf make these fish some of the coolest records in the sport.
Bait-Monkey: Soft Approach to Slow-Pitch Jigging (FishingWire) - The embedded lead weight balances the Slow Squid for a horizontal fall and allows fishermen to fish it like a metal jig, but its soft silicone surface provides all the wings and whistles of a soft bait. Its small shape will enable anglers to fish in deep water, where its luminous glow and undulating action will attract and entice the most finicky gamefish. —> Probably worth a look for Stripers and BFT…
Thanks for reading The Weekly Salvage, until next week!
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