Anyone seen any bluefin this year? Some nice fish are being caught off NC as far south as Wilmington. Typical for this time of year. A friend saw one caught, in the 500# range. Heard of one grander/possible state record but no confirmation. That’s a lot of sushi.
Two surprising things: first they come in so close, even less than two miles off the beach. Second, it seems they would also show up somewhere off SC? Or are we just missing them?
Maybe 10 years back a few were caught off Hilton Head. I was fishing out of Edisto then. We went south, and tried for them with no hook ups. But we did see them. As the saying goes, looked like “dropping Volkswagens in the water”.
We went up there in 96 when the bite was really going off and participated in the first Tag-A-Giant tournament which was surgically implanting satellite tags in the fish. Our best day was 16 bluefin with 4 very tired anglers. Acres of VW Bug sized fish were balling king mackerel and other bait for most of the 2 days. Got to watch a 300-500 lb fish greyhound right behind a greyhounding king 50 yards from the boat. Was some serious plant earth type s**t esp. the first day.
How long before bluefin fishing is competely banned off our coasts? With the stocks being decimated down to 10%ish of levels just 40 years go thanks to the Japanese, Italians etc one would assume its coming.
