Roy's Report
January 12-13, 2010
I spent two days down in Hatteras NC, Jigging for tuna, Amber Jacks, and other top water pelagics, and bottom fishing for Tile, Snowy Grouper and what ever else we could crank up from the deep.
On the first morning we started the day looking for Yellow fin by trolling and when Captain Piland spotted some on the fish finder he would stop the boat, tell us how many colors down the fish were, we let the jigs fly and start jigging, (The boat supplied speed jigging rod and reel equipment). We did that for a hour of two but we couldn't entice a bite from the Yellow Fin, so the Captain said lets go look for some Black Fin and Amber Jacks.
At the Black Fin/Amber Jack spot, drop the jig reel up 10 - 15 feet, Bam broke my 80# mono top shot. My first AJ hit impressed me. I Re-rigged and loosened the drag a quarter turn and dropped the jig, reel up 10 - 15 feet, Bam broke my top shot again!
I get the Captain to tie my mono to my ss ring, loosened the drag a half turn more and dropped the jig, reel up 10 - 15 feet,
Bam the mono holds, and the AJ pulls about 200 ft of line off my spinner before stopping.
I boated 2 or 3 more and lost a couple. I like these fish they give a good fight for their size.
We didn't find any Black Fin tuna so we headed to a Grouper spot where we finished the day catching a few Snowy Grouper.
Day two: We started out looking for those elusive Black Fin, but all we had were the Amber Jack to keep us busy. I also managed to boat a false Albacore at this spot. After an hour or so we opted to pull up some more Grouper, and after the Grouper we would deep drop for some Blue Line Tile. At the Tile spot we boated Tile and Grouper, and remained here for the rest of the day.
When we caught the first Snowy Grouper I commented on the striking resemblance of the Snowy Grouper to the Wreck Fish we catch at the canyons up here, and was sure they are related species. The Snowy has white snow flake shaped spot on its body and is smaller in size. After getting home I Googled "Snowy Grouper/wreck fish" , Snowy Grouper loose their spots as they get older and bigger. So a Wreck fish is a big Snowy Grouper.
Heres a link: http://www.globalanglers.com/FishSpecies/Grouper/snowygrouper.htm
- Roy
PS: The wife and I had some Bull shark stakes tonight and it very good, cooked it in a butter and lemon sauce. Told her it was a Bull fish.