Sport-fishing trips don't usually get rescued by the last hour of daylight, but Captain Cody at Reel Guides TV banks on it. After an afternoon spent hustling bait, clearing customs and moving five birdy flocks for nothing, his Bimini yellowfin trip turned in roughly the time it takes to eat dinner — and ended with 18 tuna on the deck of Mike Maldune's Good Hit Sport Fishing boat.
The morning had been a grind. Cody, Mike Maldune, Mike Walters, Russ and Reel Guides TV cameraman Grant left Fort Lauderdale around 5 am, lost half their bait through a dud livewell on the run across, and started actually fishing for tuna closer to 1 pm than midday. A wahoo troll on the move produced a couple of small "king-fish-with-stripes" on RJ Boil jets and one decent 45-pound class fish on a blue and white jet head — the colour Cody calls iconic over there. "Catch a lot of nice fish," he said of the blue-and-white jet. "And we're stoked."
The stoked feeling didn't last. "We literally getting discouraged because we hit like five bird flocks, not a single bite from a yellow elephant," Cody said. "But I was telling the boys the last hour of the day is when the elephants like to play."
The last hour duly arrived. A small black-fin tuna grabbed a back rod first; the bottom machine started painting fatter fish underneath; and then, in Cody's own words, the deck went into mayhem. "They're behind us. They're behind us. Right here," he called, ringing rods around the cockpit. "They're biting up there. They're biting everywhere."
What followed was a full-on yellowfin blitz. Live baits were eaten as fast as the crew could pin them on. Russ's spinning rod doubled into the water on a fish the boat estimated was close to or in the mid-90s of pounds. Within minutes the deck had four fish in it, then five, with simultaneous rod bends shouted across the cockpit. The on-deck count topped out at 18 yellowfin tuna in roughly an hour. "Yellow fishing doesn't get any better," Cody said. "It really doesn't."
Gear-wise, the wahoos had come on a four-rod spread of three RJ Boil jet heads and a Nomad on the long. The 45-pound class fish ate a blue-and-white RJ Boil jet on a Mustad 7691. The yellowfin all came on Mustad 30 and 40 3X offset circle hooks, fished off live bait the crew had spent the better part of the morning hustling to keep alive.
Cody's takeaway, between hand-clamps as the boat cleaned up, was patience over hardware. "Things look pretty bleak there for a little bit," he said, "but we knew that when sun got low, the fish would probably feel the fill. It was absolutely unreal."
The debrief came with a quirk. Cody fillets a demonstration tuna on camera in food-prep gloves and explains why. "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 safe — only direct skin contact with the meat sets off the reaction.
For anyone planning their own crossing, the trip log read like a checklist. Leave Lauderdale early, clear customs in Bimini, make a wahoo pass on the move, then wide-troll bird flocks until something breaks. Bait management is what nearly cost the day — half the live wells died on the run — so over-prepare on bait, and don't fold up the spread before the last hour of light.
"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."