Today my fishing buddies were Scott Santomauro, CJ Hatzel, Michael Duffield, and Anthony Thermenos all from Orlando and out to celebrate the upcoming marriage of Scott later this year, a bachelors' party of a different sort. The purpose was for Scott, who also owns a boat with radar to pick up on a few tricks of the trade on fishing for tuna, Port Canaveral style.
     I was a little apprehensive about the expectations of scoring on the Yellowfins and warned Scott that so far this year the catch rate was definitely not what you would ordinarily expect. Still off we went from Port Canaveral at 3:00 AM on a flat calm sea and very light westerly winds. I decided to work the area pretty much north of Walkers and northeast of the humps and we were able to mark a number of packs of birds. First off we got into the schoolie Mahi and put a few on ice. Next pack resulted in a few more schoolies and a gaffer. Moving on off to the southeast we finally found some tuna and managed a few blackfins and a throwback yellowfin. Next pack we caught a couple more blackfins and had a really nice hit with a good run into the braid backing on the TLD 50 LRS and unfortunately pulled the hooks. Next pack we hooked up with two fish, the first one got off right after the hook up but CJ hung on for dear life and after a typical straight up and down battle with the fish doing the circles I was able to sink the iron into what turned out to be a fine Yellowfin tipping the certified scales at 70 pounds. We fished a few more packs of birds and picked up a another short yellowfin, a few more blackfins and a couple more missed opportunities at what were probably keeper yellowfins but for whatever reason couldn't keep them buttoned up.
    When we started the long run back to Port Canaveral we were 101 NM southeast of the port and it took 3 hours and fifteen minutes to make the run. We hit the jetty at 5:45 PM I cleaned their fish and Scott and the guys were on their way back to Orlando by about 9:00 PM. Would have been a stellar day if we could have stayed buttoned up with the ones that got away, but all in all a beautiful day on the water with one quality Yellowfin in the box and a bunch of eating fish for the table.

Final tally for the day:
3 Yellowfin Tuna one 70# and two short.
7 Blackfin Tuna
12 Mahi