Waaaaay Back........

8-9 years ago....Sometime when fishing for tuna wasn't so technical and specific we used to play around with new ideas to take these fish more consitently on fly equipment. Now nothing is better than rolling up on a frothing school of bft in the middle of nowhere with a heavy wt flyrod in hand....I have seen it make the most worldly traveled angler weak in the knees. So weak where I would always say..."just think of them as goldfish and reeeeeelaaaaax"
But the truth is, alot of fly guys who wanted a bluefin on the fly just did not have the expertise to seal the deal.
Trolling for bluefin was and is really popular and effective for bluefin. I can remember a certain day way way way east of Chatham where Riptide, Double Happiness and myself buddy boated out and all 3 boats landed and released over 30 bft per boat. Now these fish were small and even on 30 class gear were outmatched.
The idea of bait and switch for these fish had been on my mind for awhile...So what I did was take two 13" squid bars and take the stinger hook off and replace with a 3 ounce egg sinker....We deployed two of these bars *flatline* off the stern, one on each corner. The flyrod was rigged with either one of these green machine flies or a HUGE pink and white popper similar to what is used for sailfish. Sixty feet of flyline was stripped into a 6 gallon bucket and the rod was rested in the bucket and the fly hooked onto the lip....
We would troll around until a school came up behind the bars. When the fish were small, they would stay on a shell squid for awhile. Just long enough for the angler to grab the flyrod and lay out a quick cast behind the bar and strip the fly violently next to the stinger. It generally wasn't long until we got hooked up. We only reeled the bars in after we got hooked up...This was a great way to get bft on the fly when they were not crashing in big schools and staying up....I have not used this technique in many years but I was just down cleaning my man cave and came about these flies and started dreaming back of days gone by.....Just another chapter in the incredible bft fishery that we have here on the Cape. One I hope we continue to have down the road. It would be great if 10 years from now we are talking and writing about how *remember when we almost lost the right to fish for bluefin tuna*.......I hope so...