Hi Guys- Sorry for the long delay between reports.. been very busy.
A few days ago I had Barry & Cathy Beck come up to Maine to try and do a photo shoot for Bluefin tuna on fly. The days previous I was finding a few fish here and there but they were up and down and hard as hell to get on. I really wanted to show these guys what bluefin tuna are all about and decided we would trailer south to anywhere we could find some good numbers. After talking to friends and guides from MA and CCB the word was the same- SLOW but fish around. We had a perfect weather forecast for the day here and decided we would stay fishing out of Portland and go for broke. We hit our first mark around 6:30am and within minutes it looked good with shearwaters flying around and sitting on the water. Tuna began to show slowly rolling through tiny 2" bait, we started working the fish which we had all to ourselves. Shot after shot with not even a look. Change flies and again not bites ? Tons of bait in the water was making things difficult and the fish seemed to be feeding very lazily. After about 1.5-2 hrs of this we needed a break to regroup. We dug through some flies and watched fish off in the distance really start to turn it on as the fish got thier act together. We decided to go big and put on a big grey colored mushy. As we approached the fish I noticed the bait was much bigger and so were the fish all in 50-80lb class. They were on the halfbeaks !! Here we go... Second cast and Cathy sticks one, off to the races, I start the boat as the fish empties backing off like in freespool, before we can even move the boat the hook pulls. We are back on the fish in about 5 minutes and next cast we are tight again this time I tell her to stick'em like a tarpon and we are off to the races again. My cell phone rings and it's my brothers boat a couple hundred yards away telling us to get over to them Barry has got one on and he needs someone to shoot photos... sorry guys we are already fighting one ourselves "your on your own". After about 35 minutes we land Cathy's first bluefin ever a nice 55-60lb fish. We boat him and run over to the other boat to see if they are still on. We pull up aside and Barry jumps in our boat so we can shoot some photos and a short time later I tail Barry;s 70lb fish. A few photos and back in the water he goes. All said and done we saw hundeds if not thousands of fish for the day with not another boat in sight. 4 hook-ups, 2 landed, one "BIG" fish fought for over an hour which straightened a hook on us and one blown apart 12wt rod. A good day, the tuna gods shined on us "big time".
-Capt. John Ford
Portland Guide Service
