Today I had the pleasure of fishing with Wayne Burns aboard his new 32' Sea Vee with my brother Bob, Wayne's friend Eric Castillo who works for Sea Vee Boats, and good buddy and otherside veteran Buck Buchanan. I was asked by my brother and Wayne to tag along with them and show them how tuna fishing is done Port Canaveral style and bloody up his new boat.

    The plan of the day was to meet Wayne at Ft. Pierce at 3:00 AM after he trailered his boat up from Ft. Lauderdale and run across to the otherside side. Well Murphy's Law struck and Eric's truck broke down just after they left Wayne's house on State Road 84 and by they time they changed trucks we didn't depart Ft. Pierce inlet until 4:30 AM. We braved 3-5 ft following seas with a 17 knot north wind for the crossing with the hope that the NOAA forecast would be right and have the winds and seas lay down in the afternoon. It was full rain gear necessary with the wind on the beam but the 32' Sea Vee handled it with no problems.

    We arrived in the zone about 9:00 AM and our first pass on our first flock of birds resulted in two 45# YFT in the box, one pulled hook and one eaten by the man in the grey suit. Bloody deck is what we came for, however, because of our late start we were only able to bag a couple of Blackfin Tuna and a skippy before the late afternoon. We found two weed lines around mid-day, however, the Mahi either didn't want to cooperate or just weren't there. We did have a baby Sailfish come into our spread and Wayne quickly brought him alongside and Buck released him and added a sailfish release to our day.

    Since we got a late start we all agreed to stay for the afternoon bite and thankfully it paid off really BIG. The last pass of the day on the last flock of the day resulted in only one hook up but that hook up ended up with a Yellowfin Tuna of 105 pounds for Eric and the fish was not weighed until 10:00 AM the next day. It was caught on after a battle of about one hour and I'll have to give Eric credit who took the beating without any whining even with all of us heckling him about wasting our fishing time. Definitely a great way to break into tuna fishing Port Canaveral style and a monster of a tuna for this area.

    We departed the other side at 7:30 PM and had a calm, thanks NOAA, return crossing arriving at the ramp in Ft. Pierce at 11:30 PM.

BTW, all I caught was a Yellowfin skull when I took one for the team and fed a hungry shark.   

Final tally for the day:
5 Yellowfin Tuna - the largest 105 lbs.
1 Sailfish released to grow up.
3 Blackfin Tuna
4 Skipjack Tuna released.