Catching Bluefish to use as Live Bait for Giant Tuna

Apart from awful weather, capturing, hauling and stocking healthy live bait was one of the most tough giant tuna challenge for myself and my crew last season. I’m thrilled to state that thus far this autumn, the latest on the live bait scene is a bit more reassuring.

Live bluefish and live pogies make awesome bait for giant tuna.  When fishing Cape Cod, using kites and balloons are effective and popular methods for presenting these two feisty baits to big tuna.

This past weekend I drove the Miss Loretta straight down Cape to Lewis Bay, outside the Hyannis Marina. My offshore fishing pal had completed a bluefish adventure in Lewis early on in the week, and seen numerous optimal size bluefish feeding on five in. young bunker. Each of our expectations were definitily set high for a productive tuna bait venture.

Here we are in the middle of a striped bass blitz.  Yes I know, this doesn't have much to do with catching giant tuna bait, yet when fishing Cape Cod, bass blitzes often occur in the same areas where you will be catching bluefish and pogies.

I was happy to find that, the public fishing boat ramp at Lewis Bay is gorgeous. It’s a paved ramp, with a brand spanking constructed pier as well as a good deal of room to steer a truck and trailers. In addition to that, there was no cost. I’m betting free accessibility was a post-Labor Day phenomenon, and isn’t the standard at Lewis Bay. In either case, I’ll take it!

Promptly after some searching all-around we located the motherload of bluefish piled up in 7-18 ft of h2o. The schools of snapper and rat blues shifted up and down the channel edge, however there ended up being so many bluefish, that when we lost them, it didn’t require much time for us to move around and quickly zone back in again. Best fishing took place the moment the tide started coming in. The fast fishing slowed fairly quickly the second the current began to come to a halt, around 11am.

Here we battle a 673 pound giant tuna caught on a live bluefish off Cape Cod, MA during September of 2010.

We dealt with a large amount of tiny blues that were just way too small to employ as bait for bluefins. Nonetheless, for every dozen undersize bluefish we caught, we would hook one longer bluefish-appropriate for live bait. It was evident that that any time we discovered a tight school of small bunker, we found larger bluefish in the vicinity.

Most productive lure for the very small blues was a golden one inch spoon. The thing casts very well on 6 pound line, and works remarkably well. Best lure for for the perfect bait size bluefish was a 3 inch suspending, blue colored Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow.

I am certainly hoping that the Bay will become packed with giant tuna bait size blues through September and October. It would be excellent to possess a solid location for tuna bait. Even if we certainly have to travel a fair distance to find the bluefish.

 A little more Cape Cod Bay night fishing action!