New Years Bluefin Tuna and Rockfish

The rockfish bite had been down for the last two days. I fished Saturday (New Year's Eve) off of the Virginia Beach ocean front, and did not see a rockfish caught. What I did see were several boats with spooled reels, and heard tales of endless battles with big bluefin tuna. This was all happening among the striper fleet just off the beach. We even had a bluefin hooked up briefly on Saturday until he came unbuttoned after a few tail pumps. So, the striper bite was off, but the tuna bite was on. I decided I was fishing on Sunday, New Year’s Day, and either rockfish or tuna was fine by me. We headed towards Cape Henry from Lynnhaven Inlet, starting with a sunny day with light southerly winds. I was happy to hear that boats were hooking up with rockfish again off the Cape. I also heard of a few bluefin tuna already hooked up. We passed the huge striper fleet at Cape Henry, and headed further south to begin trolling for tuna. After trolling for a few hours, one of the rods with an umbrella rig went down and we all jumped into action with our big chance. Turned out to be a false alarm. It was just a 40lb striper, but good practice. Boats hooked up off and on most of the morning around us, but no luck for us with the tuna. The wind picked up and the seas became a little sloppy. We decided to head back north to pick through a few rockfish for the cooler. We picked up and ran to Cape Henry where we found beehives of birds scattered off of the Ramada about a mile off the beach. We marked plenty of bait and fish on our machine. Most of the fleet was still off Cape Henry, so we had the birds almost to ourselves. We had our fish and were on our way in about 45-minutes. All of the fish hit umbrella rigs. The fish ranged from 25 to 40-pounds. We called a few buddies over, and called it a day at around 4pm. What a great way to spend New Year’s Day, on the water with friends and catching nice fish. Happy New Year!

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