Remember the old tv comercials "Bo knows baseball, Bo knows football"? Then they show hockey and Bo shakes his head and says "Nope!" Well Riptide knows tuna and Riptide know bass, but kids "Nope"
Today I had an old friend from when I lived in Florida on the boat. She and her girlfriend brought their two 10 year old sons up for a surprise vacation. They were going to do some educational stuff around Plymouth and then surprise them with a fishing trip. Both boys have been fishing before and my friend owns a F33 Donzi we used to fish the Bahamas in. So the boys are water savy as are the ladies.
Well I figured how cool would it be to hook these two boys up on a couple of 100# tuna. I have no kids and I'm an only child so I am REALLY lacking in the knowledge of a childs capabilities as related to age.
An aside: I was on a plane to Mexico with my wife when an infant was screaming bloody murder from it's ears popping. After about 10 minutes I looked at my wife and said "why can't someone give that damn kid some F'ing gum and shut him up?" My wife looked at me and calmy asked "are you really that retarded?" Aparently you don't give gum to a 5 month old!
So with that as background, I planed my trip. We met at Plymouth around 8 am and I had Mike C with me as mate and child leasion. He brought along the kiddie PFD's that the boys could wear while underway since my Commercial Type 1's are not really all day comfortable.
When Mike and I were drving up to the ramp he asked how old the kids were. I told him 8 to 12 I guess. He was pretty sure 100# tuna was not going to be the game plan, but I thought what does he know, he only has two kids of his own.
When the two boys came over to meet us I saw they were a bit smaller than I had expected. When I asked what they weighed they said around 60#. Suddenly Mike C's words were coming back at me fast.
Since I always have a backup plan I knew we had hoards of big bluefish around Race Point and that should get these kids going and then in my mind we could always move on to tuna if the blues proved too easy. (Yeah I know now I'm an idiot)
We ran over to RP in some sloppy seas. The 3-5's were no match for the new boat and with the kids both curled up in one beanbag and Steph in the other we ran accross the bay.
Once on site the now 4-6's made moving around a bit of a chore. As sea worthy as the crew was I began to realize that fishing in this would prove to be a bit much for the little guys. I made the command decision to run back to Plymouth and pull the boat for a trailer to Buzzards Bay.
Back accross the bay we went and we headed to Bourne. En route a quick pit stop for potty and coffee. While waiting I managed to drop and shatter my Rx Costa Del Mar's. I was NOT a happy camper.
We splash in Bourne and run all over looking for albies or blues. We found what i thought were tons of small albies that nobody seemed to be able to catch. Uppon further examination I think they were frigget macks since I never saw one that looked to be over 2#. That would explain the lack of catching by the fleet.
WE bailed on the picky critters and found ourselves a TON of 2-5# bluefish over by Marion. What normally would have been a plauge today was a day saver.
Mike C rigged up the light rods with Yo Zuri's and Chug Bugs and the kids and Mom's went to town. The kids were hammering the rat blues and having a ball. Suddenly my perspective on things all came around and I started to see things clearly. These kids dind't need (nor could they have handled) 100# tuna. They needed every cast action from the pirahna like blues. For several hours Mike C and I unhooked doubles, triples and quads of the puking little rat blues. My boat looked like a chum bucket from all the bluefish puke but everyone was as happy as they could be.
Final tally for the day around 20 fish per angler I can't be sure, they were coming over the rail as fast as we could unhook them. The lure of choice Yo Zuri's and Chug Bugs. The kids LOVED the surface strikes. We were in 20' of water with bluefish banging off the boat as we drifted for miles. If your looking fo albies stay clear of this area. Its rat blues by the millions. Now if your looking for shark bait
Overall a great ending to a great day. Smiles all around and a lesson learned for the Capt. I like kids on the boat, but my knowledge of their abilities goes something like (They crawl, they walk and talk, they drive off to college) Those are kind of the three catagories I file kids into. The year in and year out changed in between those groups is a bit beyond me. Sad but true. It was nice however to take a step back from the hard core catch the biggest, mostest, hugest metality and see the kids having fun just catching fish PERIOD! Sometimes I think I'd like to be more like that again.