8/15 Falmouth Grand Prix RIPDOG Report

Albatross · 08-19-2008, 01:35 PM

Hello All,

Sorry for the delayed report....

With the tough forecast Thursday night basically into Saturday we decided to scratch the Canyon trip and do a day trip out East of Chatham for Day 1 of this tourney. For Friday we had a crew of Capt. Scott Clay, his son and 08’ RIPDOG good luck charm Tommy Tuna, Scott’s brother-in-law “Chef” Steve-O, The “Rastafarian

” Patty Salvato, and yours Truly.

So we blasted out of Falmouth Harbor at 0300 and steamed towards Crab Ledge. We had one incident with a Lightening/Thunder Storm on the way out that we carefully avoided but other than that we had a nice run to the grounds and were fishing by 0600

The area initially looked really good with acres and acres of Shearwaters and a variety of whale species. Figured we were sure to hook up…. We pounded the area for a while and then finally around 0730 we see busting BlueFin on the surface….Shortly after that, the left short gets assaulted with a big boil but no hook-up…..30 seconds later the flat lined birdy bar in the wash gets crushed and the “Rasta Boy” gets to work on this fish….Before I could get the gloves on to leader this fish, he already had it to the boat. I grabbed the leader and the Chef whacked it with a funky gaff shot and with a little help from me we hoisted the fish over the rail and onto the floor of the Dog!

Nice mid 50” fat fish…Thankfully we were on the board.

We quickly got the spread back out and noticed that the area still looked really really fishy…..We had low flying flocks of Tuna Chics and Shearwaters crashing the water right in front of us so Patty increased the speed a bit to get there a little quicker. All of a sudden we had busting BluFin 30 yards in front of us off our Starboard side without a boat in site. Once we were about even with the madness I yelled up to Patty to cut our spread right into it. As soon as he cut into it, every one of our Bars got blown up…..We basically had a Wolf Pack BigEye Hit but only from BFT instead.

Unfortunately only one rod stuck and "Chef" Steve-O began doing work on this fish….We had a little mishap at the boat and the fish was released on its own terms without a tag so we were not able to count this fish toward the tourney release points.

So back in went the spread but by now the word was out that the bite was on and we were quickly covered up with tons of boats. We worked the same area for another 30 minutes or so weaving in and out of the whales. This time Mr. Pinky gets smashed and taken for a ride. The “Rasta Boy” grabbed the rod and had this fish boat side in about 20 minutes. We yanked this 62” butterball through the door, slapped a tag in his chunky grindle and shipped him on his way. Feisty fish that swam away nicely.

The rest of Friday was pretty quiet for us. The life seemed to of disappeared after the slack. We fished until about 1300 without another hit before calling it a day. We felt pretty good about making the decision to not fish the Canyons as there were rumors of 50 knot winds, lightening, hail and funnel clouds down there.

Also, congrats to Capt. Eric on the Tammy Rose for getting a big beast of a fish right next to us that afternoon. He was very pumped about it. You deserve it Cappy Stew!!

When we arrived back in Falmouth we headed over to the weigh station to weigh our fish. It taped out at a solid 98lbs. We were also given 25 release points for the Tuna that we tagged and let go. A bit of a bummer not being able to weigh in that fish as it was considerably bigger than the one we kept. We gave the biologist there the tuna’s stomach and a nice meat sampling for them to do some research with. We pulled away from the weigh station to a standing ovation from the crowd that had gathered. Very nice way to end another successful outing aboard the RIPDOG.

I forgot my camera on Friday but I will post pics as soon as the crew gets them to me.

The rest of the weekend will be posted in a new thread….

Brian Droney
ALBATROSS on the RIPDOG

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Ads Do NOT Show To Registered Members