Is there any boats trolling?

[Tuna55]

I know with the unbelievable catchs on the chunk has anyone been trolling at all....I mean there has to be some areas that are holding yft....whites....blues and mahi.....Any reports?

[NachoLibre]

They're all holding in the area where people are chunking.

[talbot29]

We plan on chunking Sunday morning and then troll for marlin if and when the bites dies off.

Tim T.
Got Fish Too?
Judge 34 Express

[PGM3638]

I've attmepted to troll after running out of butterfish with limited success. Its amazing how fast you can put fish in the boat right now on the chunk. I prefer to troll and run out to the canyons but you just cant beat the 42 mile chunk bite at the Dog! When the BFT were there a couple weeks ago we had a school of galfer mahi and a big White Marlin come right next to the boat. I free galfed one mahi and got 5 others in right after. We were gonna try and throw something at the Marlin but were hooked up with a 90lb BFT that my buddy and I were having a hell of a time with! Not a fan of getting the boat filthy from chunking but can deal with it when the action is as good as it has been.

Pat M
OCMD
28 CC Southport

[Mike Avery]

You guys don't know how good you got it to have YFT and BFT in the same hole for chunking. I'm jealous.

[canujigit]

I troll therefore I am.... plus I don't have the gear for deep water anchoring and I'm not much for chunking anyway.

We were trolling poormans Tuesday, there is life. Raised a pair of marlin with a tuna spread and no teasers, you could probably do better if you were actually targeting them. Probably going to try and get out again Monday?? if the weather cooperates and gets a little better??

[shoot-straight]

I troll therefore I am.... plus I don't have the gear for deep water anchoring and I'm not much for chunking anyway.

We were trolling poormans Tuesday, there is life. Raised a pair of marlin with a tuna spread and no teasers, you could probably do better if you were actually targeting them. Probably going to try and get out again Monday?? if the weather cooperates and gets a little better??

heading out monday to chunk, but will troll at least a while after we sling the chunks! need a wahoo or wm to be caught on my boat bad. maybe we'll just troll in a big circle around the fleet! ive seen some troll right on through, they were very popular among the chunkers.

[canujigit]

Hahaha, that's kind of my backup plan if the canyons look too nasty, troll the lumps around the dog. At the moment looks like it will be nicer North, so I may end up at Wilmington of course the weather can and probably will change another half dozen times between now and then.

[23gulfstream]

There might be a lot more trolling going on after this blow rolls through (I hope). I too am in the same situation. Most guys I fish with don't really care how we catch them so when they hear these reports they are all hell bent on going down there and doing it. Another thing is it always seems like we hear about a killer bite all week and by the time we get down there on the weekend the bite is over. This happened last year when there was a killer troll bite at the dog in early July and then people started chunking and shutting it down. Well needless to say we got there on a Friday and anchored up and didn't have a bite all day along with the rest of the fleet as the fish moved on. Fishing in a fleet of 100+ boats and using 20 lb leaders to get a bite just sucks in my opinion. But I will say that if you have a good satellite service and look at the last chlorophyll shot there was really good water from the Washington up to the Poormans and there were some tunas in that water. A friend of mine had nicer sized tuna mixed in with whites and blues in the Poormans last weekend in that water with only a few other boats around. You're not going to sink the boat with fish like the guys on the dog are doing but there are areas that are holding fish. Give me 5-6 tuna and some marlin bites and maybe a dolphin or wahoo and that's all I need. Good luck to you and post how you do. Sunday's weather looks decent so far.

And if you do decide to troll around the dog as some others have pointed out troll the lumps around the fleet and maybe even up to the hot dog notch on the 30. Put out 30' long 80lb fluro crank on leaders with naked split bill ballyhoo and slow the speed down to 5.5-5.8 knots and maybe even slower. A simpler more natural stealthy presentation may yield some tuna troll bites for you.

[23gulfstream]

As suspected the chunking absolutely sucked yesterday. We didn't even try to troll since the guys on board wanted to stay committed to the chunk/jig. The blue water that was sitting on the dog all last week is gone and what was there yesterday looked terrible. Most guys were skunked or had 1 fish. Still waiting on a clear chloro/temp shot to locate the nearest blue water but that NE blow really wrecked havoc on the fishing yesterday.