Fishing Reports
Collin Catches record 54.7# Striped Bass
This big striped bass didn’t slip the hook
By RICHARD GAINES Staff Writer Gloucester Times
Colin MacKenzie is a professional fisherman. So when he hooked up at dawn yesterday a couple miles out past the Dog Bar breakwater, it was with some experience that he said, “I thought I had a tuna.”
Un-uh. MacKenzie would discover to his great pleasure 10 minutes later that, using a live mackerel, he’d hooked and boated a striped bass for the ages.
Back at Winchester’s Fishing Company where it was weighed into an annual contest as the leader by far, MacKenzie learned he had caught a 54-pound bass — so far as Winchester’s knows, the largest bass of the decade, and only the second 50-plus bass in 15 years.
Winchester’s has already weighed in five other fish of more than 35 pounds in a season that seems ready to take its place as the best for fish of a certain size.
By the standard chart of length, age and weight, the MacKenzie bass likely hatched from an egg in 1986, about the time a massive all-points recovery program to save the striped bass from extinction finally took hold.
The recovery has been one…(continue reading)
Slow Tuna fishing at the NWC this week
We were out four days this past week, two days for Tuna and two Bass trips. As you know the Bank has been very slow with some school and giants caught in Cape Cod bay and off P-town. Yesterday Captain Collin went east after not seeing any signs of fish at the corner despite huge pods of bait and many whales and trolled out toward Wildcat Knoll without seeing any fish. We did mark some small to medium Tuna deep down, on the edge of the bank, on the sonar at first light. Even the Gloucester stick boats have been slow the past few days but we expect the fishing to heat up when we get a change in the wind and some cooler water onto the bank. Collin recorded temps as high as 68.5 degree’s yesterday and saw the thermocline between 50-60′.
We have heard that there are some significant schools of fish (not sure what size) way to the east, out by Davis Swell and Sewell Ridge which is 100 NM east of Gloucester. Although these fish may be headed for Canada, with the abundance of bait and mackerel in the Gulf of Maine, that pattern might change….(continue reading)
Tuna Trip Saturday June 21st-slow bite
We pushed off the dock at 3:00 AM with Christian Bilodeau and his small group from central Mass. We headed right back to the Northwest Corner at had line is the water trolling by first light. We found that the bite had slowed down since Wednesday and we had the added disadvantage of well over a hundred boats trolling a couple of square miles. About 6:00 AM we got a call from another captain to get right up on the bank a couple of miles down and we immediately started marking tuna and huge balls of bait. After one knockdown we hooked a nice fish on a squid rig and had a good fight before we were able to gaff and tail rope it. The BFT was in the hundred pound range and after trolling for another couple of hours we had some grilled tuna steak and headed in. Christian and his group went home tired and happy with many tuna steaks. We will be back out this week and hopefully with a wind shift and 90% less boat traffic the action will be great…(continue reading)
Awesome Tuna Fishing Trip June 18th!
After convincing our clients to leave the dock really early today (2:30 AM) we headed out to troll the NW corner. We had our lines in the water well before 4:00 AM and by 6:00 AM we had hooked up three bluefins on artificial squid. All the action was on the eastern edge today. By 9:00 AM we hand five hookups and landed three all in the 60-100 lb range. We had a Large or Giant come up and take a look at our rigs but couldn’t get a bite. By 10:00 AM we were jigging for small bluefin that were frenzy feeding on balls of sand eels. All in all a great day on the water!
The Tuna fishing is off to an incredible start this year. This was our second Tuna trip of the season and we can’t believe how good the condition are already at what would typically be considered “early season”. We are totally jazzed about Tuna Fishing this year!
Boston Striper Shootout- Saturday June 15th
This past Saturday, we had a client charter the Karen Lynn for the Boston Striper Shootout Tournament with a $5k winner take all purse, for the longest fish. We had the 250 gallon livewell packed with live herring and mackeral and lines in the water at 5:00 AM. We had steady action all day releasing about 18 fish in the 34″-40″ with a few a little bigger. We knew that to win we needed a fish over 46″ and we fished right up to the 5:00 PM deadline. Unfortuately that effort and some serious traffic made us miss the 6:00 PM weigh-in in Chelsea by 10 minutes! Not Good. The winning fish was monster at 48 1/2″ so we would have been likely 4th place at best had we made it on time. A fun day of great fishing with a frustrating ending.
Jim and Collin
Karen Lynn Charters
http://www.karenlynncharters.com/
More Striper Pictures from 5/28 Trip
First Light Anglers/Karen Lynn Trip May 28th
On last Wednesday May 28th, Nat and Derek came out with Collin and I to fish for their first time on the Karen Lynn. Also along were Chris Coombs, who works at the FLA shop and will be a mate on the Karen Lynn this year, and Gabe Davis who was along to shoot some video for us.
We left early and had planned to go directly to the NW corner, but we were faced with sloppy sea’s and wind out of the North, gusting to 30 knots. We quickly realized that we would not be able to shoot good video from the tower drifting in confused and big seas so we decided to striper fish inside until the wind laid down a bit.
We had an awesome morning striper fishing with live mackerel in 160′-190′ of water. We caught and released many fish with Collin and Nat landing the biggest fish, both around 40″. In the afternoon the wind had died and we headed to the bank to ground fish and had…(continue reading)
Sounder Screen Shots- Lots O’ Bait
Check out these huge pods of bait at the NW corner of Stellwagen bank. This looks very promising for this summer fishing on the bank.
Jim
Pictures from Our May 25th Trip
Great action inshore and at the NW Corner Today!
Our group from Commodore Construction in Newton, were all experienced fisherman so we did a Striper/Cod combo trip. In the morning we loaded up on live mackerel and by 10:00 AM had over fifty in two live wells. We then drifted livies for Stripers and had great action catching and releasing over twenty fish mostly in the 15-20lb range although we had two striper’s that weighed in at over 30 lb!
In the afternoon we ran out to the bank and jigged for Cod. We ended up with 38 Cod legal size keepers as well as many shorts and a few haddock as well. We had a dozen Cod that were really good size for the bank this time of year. Thanks to Nat and Derek who gave us some Shimano butterfly jigs to try, which were very productive. Everyone had a great time and went home with lots of cod fillets.
We are really excited to be part of the First Light Anglers fleet and we are planning with Nat and Derek some awesome offshore trips for this summer and fall.
Jim and Collin
www.karenlynncharters.com