New Buccaneer Spring 2022 Tuna Schedule

5/23-24

Bottom fishing was great. Beeliner fishing was insane with the majority of them being jumbos, the guys that fished for them had double limits or close to it. We also caught some nice Scamps, and a big African Pompano. The AJs didn’t want to cooperate, I would have liked to see a few more of them in the box, most of them that we hooked broke us off. A few of the spots we fished I marked Jacks up high but they never turned on for us.
On the way to the rig I got a call from the office warning us about a big storm system around Brownsville heading West. I monitored it all night with our satellite weather and it would end up cutting our night short but not before we put a pile of fish in the boat.
Most of our YFT came on Halcos with a few on chunks and Frenzy’s. It was steady all night, we boated YFT on just about every drift with most drifts producing multiple fish. The Blackfin started off slow for us but ended up biting pretty good after midnight.
By 4:00 am the system had moved within 60 miles of us so we headed home. I kicked it in gear and we ran 24-25 knots home and we were able to beat the weather in by about 30 minutes.
Trip totals.....
38 YFT
55 BFT
8 Scamp
1 Mangrove
621 Beeliners
1 YellowEdge
2 AJ
2 AlmacoJack
1 African Pompano
1 Rainbow Runner

5/26-27
We ended our season with a bang.
I ran back to the same area as Monday’s trip for bottom fishing and we had similar results. Our catch mostly consisted of jumbo Beeliners with a few Scamps and an AJ.
Our night started at the same floater as the previous trip as well. The first drift was good but that was about it so we ran to the next one. It was pretty crowded there, three work boats were on stand by and two were completely in the way of where we needed to drift. We caught some fish there but it was still pretty slow. We arrived at our third floater around 2 am and it was wide open from there on out for the rest of the night. We landed 50 or so more YFT in the last few hours before sunrise. Halcos, Chunks, and Frenzy’s all produced. That was the most fish I have seen at a floater in a very long time, the show we got at sunrise was spectacular. You could look in any direction and yellowfin were jumping as far as you could see.
Trip totals....
66 YFT
200 BFT
1 AJ
5 AlmacoJack
1 LongTail Sea Bass
9 Scamp
442 Beeliners

For my first tuna trip, I was like I don’t really care for catching a bunch of tuna! Give me the bottom bite that’s what I want. Standing on the Bow catching BL next to the frigging Capt of the vessel encouraging everyone, told me with the size of those you are catching who need Red Snapper, hmm not me I didn’t do as well but I caught some monsters! Well my mind on catching tuna changed after the first BFT hit, what a rush and after many more rushes I came to and said I want a YFT, out came the Halco and on came the YFT bite up and down the deck hollering hot rod hot rod, never knew you could get horsed have fun and catch tuna at the same time! Also was my first time catching processing, and plating tuna I caught less than 24 hour old! Now I have cooked, plated and served tuna hundred of times just not my own. Thanks Captain Matt and the crew especially Nacho, for being the pros that make Matt shine.