[Super Strike]

The past three days have been tough if you were looking for Tuna. There were tuna caught this weekend but not by us, and from what I heard there were several tuna skunkings. We searched to the East and to the West and some how managed not to make it to the only couple of places they were biting. It was all about timing the past three days and ours was way off. Friday, we started out with the Victor Shaffer crew. They wanted tuna bad so after our first stop produced nada in the tuna category we rolled the dice and headed 60 miles offshore for the sure thing. After arriving there, it looked bad, the current was one of the strongest currents I have seen offshore and never saw one fish while there. We made another gamble and ran another 10 miles southeast hoping to get lucky and nothing there as well except for a lonely litte bit better than a chicken dolphin which we quickly put in the box. After that we made our 70 mile track back to the near shore rigs for a quick limit of snapper. On Saturday I talked with the guys before we left about the tuna bite and it would be a lot of running and patience and we could possibly get a few tuna. They wanted to try for tuna anyway and that is what we did. This time we ran to the opposite areas we fished the day before unfortunately with the same results. There were some small tuna popping here and there and we gave it a try with nothing willing to eat what we were offering. After some more running and searching, still nothing. It was strange not to see anything at all going on at the places we were since they usually are always good for at least one. Once again we headed back in for snapper and easily found a good bite. Capt. Bob Kenney and crew opted to rig fish for snapper and grouper and had a very good day with one gag grouper going right at 30lbs. Yesterday, we took out the Roger Stevens crew who wanted to catch HMMM, I wonder, oh it was TUNA. Tried to convince them they weren't biting good right now with no success, so after the tuna we went again. This time we were blessed with catching all the perfect sized baits we needed, which was something we struggled with the past couple of days. The confidence built a little on the way to the tuna grounds knowing that if they were there we were sure to catch them. 1st line out, which didn't make it 20 ft. behind the boat before the reel started screaming, fish on, the 2nd line out was on it's way and 2 fish on, but from the beginning I knew what we had and frustratingly had a double on baby barracuda. Fished a bit longer with nothing and left for another spot. Needless to say the next two top tuna producers we fish had no tuna on it for us this day. We went after the sure thing again which was rig fishing and the guys easily put their limit of snapper in the boat, 1 A.J. , 1 grouper, and 1 wahoo. The tuna fishing has been tough but the good thing is that it will be any day that they will be biting again in full force, also the dolphin should start showing up in big numbers. It looks like we will get a little bit wind the next couple of days so our next day out will be Wed. and we will be back chasing YFT. We still have couple of days left in May and June.

Capt. Damon McKnight

Super Strike Charters/1 800 318 1720

www.superstrikecharters.com