Riptide Charters

Decided to go for broke and fish an Eastern canyon on a day trip. Water at Hydro looked good and I've never been there so the plan was set. Sam and Mark were crew for this one. We left Falmouth @ 0200 hit the tip of Hydro @ 0530. It was a bit of a sloppy ride out. The forcasted 5-7's dropping to 3-5's overnight made the run along ACK shoals a sloppy one, but we still made good time.

At the tip of Hydro there was loads of life, mamamal, bait, fish on the sounder, ton of birds. Nothing happening. We fished down to the mouth of the canyon and found only a few bait pods. We then ran East along the wall to No Name canyon. Mid way in 4700' we got our one and only hit of the day. The Way Back Machine went off and Mark went to work. In short order I stuck a gaff in a nice fat Longfin Albacore. We hamered that spot for 45 min w/o any more hits. Went back to the tip of Hydro where the life was earlier.

We had 3 buddy boats working the same general area and all were having poor luck as well. They had a few mahi and one mako biteoff but no tuna. So at 1430 we decided to head home and look for life on the way back. Of course just after geting all the lines in and stowed for the ride I see ACRES of tuna! We found several HUGE schools of MBFT about 7 miles W of the tip. The HUGE schools of them were moving E @ 5kts. They were headed into the 3-4' seas so trolling them was a PIA.

I called my buddy boat Gecko hoping he had a better plan. He had squidbars on board and went Chatham spread on the fish, but to no avail. At 1530 we both pulled the pin and flew home on FAC water. The big Contender and Gecko's 36' Yellowfin looked awesome flying back in side by side. It is definately nice to be able to day trip this far (although today was still slow).

Final tally 1 Longfin Albacore for our efforts. To my knowledge it was the only tuna our group of boats got. We had a few small mahi jump into our spread around the fliers, but the ones we saw were too small to make it worth the effort to target them.
The water was 69-73 degrees and blue/green. Gecko found some blue 72 water out there but we never located anything that didn't look mixed. water ranged from 300-5000' deep and the LF hit in 4700' off the East wall of Hydro.

Overall it was a good effort for limited results. I learned a few things and since I'm still new to the whole canyon thing thats a good thing. I learned that you can't run directly to Hydro from the Hooter in sloppy seas in the dark. The shoals will make you pay for that move. I learned I can run to Hydro and No Name and fish all day and still have enough fuel on the boat to fish all day the next day )) That tidbit will be put to use this year for sure. I learned I can make it from Hydro to the Hooter in 2.5 hour on a flat day another tidbit I'm sure we will use this year. I learned that hydro is a MUCH bigger canyon than any of the others I've fished before. It's not justa dip in the wall it's a BIG canyon!
I hope to do at least a dozen canyon trips this season. I've done a fair number of trips to Atlantis and more recently Block and I've been to Veatch a couple times, but my time of the edge is still limited. But with the ability to run to the Edge in the time it takes many boats to run to Race Point I hope to build on that learnign curve a little faster than normal. At least we didnt' get skunked and we have not been skunked on an Edge trip yet. But this one was a gift. That LF came out of nowhere. Sometimes you just haveto take the gift and say THANK YOU!

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Good Luck,

Capt. Terry Nugent
Riptide Charters
www.riptidecharters.com

jahootie

YOU WILL LEARN TO LOVE THESE CANYONS THERE AWSOME GLAD TO SEE YOU GAMBLED NEXT TIME WILL BE YOUR TIME

Albatross

Great Report Terry. If you make it a habit to fish Hydro, I gaurantee good things will happen for you Those eastern canyons are very very special without a lot of pressure. If you get the right break there, anything can and will happen.

At the last second Thursday night, we decided to run to the West instead. Check out my report for the details.

-Brian