Capt. Richard Daughdrill with Cherece IV Charters (985-515-3697 or 504-452-2874) hasn’t been sitting around on his hands waiting on the Midnight Lump to turn on. No, he’s been catching tuna while most everybody else has been idly passing their time. In fact, he’s been catching some big yellowfin since September.
“I started just trolling and spot checking the Lump back in October, and we have caught a few blackfins on it — nothing much to get excited about,” he said. “The big thing has been fishing the open-water schools of mullet.”
Daughdrill said the mullet move offshore to spawn, and the yellowfins will be around the mullet schools. Most of the action is in open water, though, so it takes a keen eye and some primo electronics to really get on them.
“The best way to find them is to just spot them with your eyes,” Daughdrill said. “From the bridge, you can see them splashing around out on the horizon. Most of the splashing you see will be from tuna that are tearing into the bait, though.”
Approaching the feeding tuna can be a little tricky. That’s why Daughdrill moves upwind of the schools. This way he can let the wind and tide quietly push him down to the school. From there, he chums the school and drifts live mullet to the tuna. Fishing this way has produced yellowfin from 125 to 185 for Daughdrill recently.
“Since it’s an open-water thing, you can also mark them on your meter while you’re running,” Daughdrill added. “Then you just stop and chum them to the top. When you do this, they can be either blacks or yellows.”
The one thing that can mess this up just like any other kind of offshore fishing is the weather. October, for example, was a horrible month for fishing the mullet schools because of the wind. Since then, though, it’s been very productive with several of the biggest yellowfin coming just 35 miles offshore.
“The Lump will turn on this month when it starts pushing the warmer water to the surface,” Daughdrill said. “The mullet spawn will be over with by then, and we’re going to do like everybody else — get in there and chum them up and fish with bonito or blackfin chunks and small live hard tails, big croakers or pinfish.”
