It was as close to a write-off as a Bimini sport-fish trip gets. By 4pm, Captain Cody, Mike Maldune of Good Hit Sport Fishing, Mike Walters, Russ and the Reel Guides TV camera had cleared customs late, lost half their bait in a dud livewell, fished five flocks of birds with no eats and watched their wahoo troll produce three small kingfish-with-stripes and a single 45-pound class fish. Then the sun got low, and the deck went into chaos.
"We literally getting discouraged because we hit like five bird flocks, not a single bite from a yellow elephant," Cody said as the boat circled a working flock. "But I was telling the boys the last hour of the day is when the elephants like to play."
The first sign was a small black-fin tuna grabbing a back rod. As the crew brought it boat-side they marked thicker fish on the bottom machine, and within seconds the surface erupted in every direction. "They're behind us. They're behind us. Right here," Cody called out. "They're biting up there. They're biting everywhere."
What followed was, in Cody's words, "as good as it gets" for yellowfin tuna. Live baits were being eaten as fast as the cockpit could pin them on. Within minutes the deck had four fish in it, then a fifth, then a giant doubling Russ's spinning rod into the water. The on-deck count topped out at 18 yellowfin in roughly an hour — including one that the team estimated was close to, if not into, the mid-90s of pounds.
Gear-wise, the wahoos earlier in the day had come on a four-rod spread of three RJ Boil jet heads and a Nomad on the long. The 45-pounder ate a blue-and-white RJ Boil jet on the long bait — a colour Cody calls iconic in the Bahamas — and was hooked on a Mustad 7691. The yellowfin cleaned up on Mustad 30 and 40 3X offset circle hooks fished off live bait the crew had hustled all morning to keep alive.
The fish-cleaning footage that closed the video came with a quirk. Cody filleted the demonstration tuna in food-prep gloves and explained why on camera. "I'm actually allergic to handling the fillets of a yellow elephant tuna," he said. "Which is crazy because I used to fillet elephants all the time and I had no issue. But in the last five years I developed this allergy to where if I hold the fillets, I will break out in hives from head to toe." Eating yellowfin, he added, is still on the table — only the handling sets him off.
For anglers planning their own Bahamas crossings, the trip log was a useful checklist. The crew left Fort Lauderdale around 5am, cleared customs on arrival in Bimini, ran a short wahoo troll to break up the move, and didn't drop a live bait for tuna until roughly 12:30pm. They worked five birdy flocks before finding the right one — the kind that produced a small black-fin first, then yellowfin underneath — and the bite ran almost all the way to dark. Bait management, not lure choice, was what nearly cost them the day.
"It's just yeah, just absolutely epic," Cody said. "And a true testament to the principles of fishing — persistence, patience and just putting in the time."