October 16, 2014 — The bluefin tuna fishing off the coast of Cape Ann in the last half-dozen days has been — sorry, there’s no other word for it — wicked. As in wicked good. As in the best tuna bite in almost a decade.
Forget about the sea being angry, my friends. It’s been positively giddy through this bountiful run, generously offering up the big bluefin runners in vast numbers.
That was evident Tuesday, on a balmy, sun-splashed autumn afternoon, when boats were queued up outside Compass Seafood near the head of Harbor Cove, fishermen waiting their turn to unload their tuna catch so Patrick Mead could start wielding his chainsaw and knife in advance of the all-important trips to the scale.
“It’s been quite a few years since we’ve seen a run like this, probably nine or 10 years,” said Mead, owner of Compass, off Commercial Street.
The parade of boats into the docks at Compass on Tuesday afternoon was like the beer line at Fenway: They just kept coming.
Capt. Paul Hebert, who has had a turn or two on “Wicked Tuna,” rolled in on the Kelly Ann just after 3 p.m., with two tuna. While those were unloaded and processed, Mark Lodge motored up on his Gloucester fishing boat, Tight Lines, with what would turn out to be one of the largest tunas of the run — 644 pounds dressed.
It took Lodge all of about seven minutes to land his behemoth.
“We were barely tight on the anchor line when I put the first rod out,” Lodge said. “It hit and the rod almost went flying right out of my hands.”
One after another, the boats just kept pulling up and Mead kept cutting, his knife flashing in the late-afternoon sun as folks gathered around the dock to check out the haul.
The hot fishing has drawn a horde of large and small tuna boats from all over New England to an area of Jeffreys Ledge, about 10 to 12 miles off Cape Ann, where fishermen are marking and catching the giant blue fin tuna in extraordinary numbers.
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