Jeff Mat and I could barely sleep the night before day one. The weather was good and the tuna were biting. Seeing the one at the dock made it real and shook the cob webs out from all the traveling. Rob and his friend Sam met us at the boat and we headed out to catch herring for bait. We had some frozen but caught fresh on the way out for hook baits. We then ran about 20 miles to “The Ridge” where we caught mackerel while we chummed with the frozen herring. We were there for a half an hour and Capt AJ saw fish swimming through the chum. I looked hard but couldn’t see them at first. I finally saw one by seeing the fin lets going through the water. They blended in with the color of the water so well they were hard to see down deep. 1 turned to 2 and 3 turned to 4 until we had them going well enough to get bit on our first tuna. Rob got it to the chair and our first fight was under way. Jeff was up first on the wire and got ready as Rob fought the fish with 35 pounds of drag. after 10 minutes we started to inch the drag up until we got to about 60 pounds of drag in about 45 minutes. Everything went smooth with the fight as Jeff reached for the leader of our first fish. He got good first wraps and did a great job on the wire finishing it off with no trouble. We got good measurements and pictures and let him go. The first hour of fishing and we got one over 800! What a start.
