Deep-sea fishing off Plum Island, Massachusetts
Yesterday my brother and I, along with 3 of his friends, went deep-sea fishing for the first time.
We left Plum Island near Newburyport on the Captain George boat on a half-day fishing trip offered by Captain’s Fishing. It’s about a 35 minute drive from Boston. The boat left at about 1:15PM, and returned around 5:30PM. The trip cost $32 per person.
There were about 20 people on our boat, some of which were more experienced than others. You can bring your own rod and reel, but it isn’t necessary, as the rod and bait are included in the cost.
The boat travels about 30 minutes or less out to sea. It’s not as far out as if you were whale watching (land is still visible), but it’s far enough.
Once you get to a spot where the Captain thinks you’ll find some fish, your boat stops and you can begin to bait your line. For bait, we used some smaller fish, about 7″ long. I have no idea what kind of fish they were.
I also had no idea how to bait a line. Someone more experienced than I gave the following tip: poke your fishhook once through the fish’s eye and out the other eye. Thread it through the body, and then once more through the tail. The goal is to make sure you don’t lose your bait, so you want to make sure it’s firmly attached to your line.
Next, I casted my line. Casting it over your shoulder as you would fishing off a bridge doesn’t work — the undercurrent ends up determining where your line ends up more than your casting skills. The most successful fishermen on the boat had really good luck casting in the direction of the current (off the back of the boat), whereas those of us who tried to fish off the side inevitably got our lines tangled at some point.
Almost immediately after I cast my first line, I got a bite. I reeled it in as fast as I could until my fish came into focus… I had caught a shark.
Technically, it was a dogfish, which looks a like a miniature two and a half foot long great white. Apparently you don’t keep or eat dogfish, so one of the guys on the boat threw it back.
We were fishing for Bluefish, which prior to this trip I hadn’t really known much about.
The bluefish, a trophy species hotly pursued by anglers due to its reputation as a champion battler and voracious predator, is native to both the American and European-African coasts of the Atlantic Ocean. Along the western Atlantic it is abundant from Argentina to Cape Cod, and it occasionally occurs as far north as Nova Scotia.
According to folks on the boat, bluefish swim no deeper than 10 feet below the surface, whereas dogfish swim much lower. Apparently I was casting my line too deep.
So I tried again. Over the next few hours I (along with everyone else on the boat) reeled in dogfish after dogfish. I must have caught at least six of them, and because they have sharp teeth and fins you have to wait for someone to come help you get unhooked before you can continue fishing. They are more a nuisance than anything.
Eventually (with some help casting from a member of the crew), I was able to pull in a bluefish. I’d say it was about 3 feet long or so, and put up considerably more of a fight than the dogfish.
On the boat ride back to shore, the crew filets and cooks some of the fish, so you can actually taste your catch, but after about 4 hours of sloshing back and forth on the high seas, I was feeling a bit too seasick to eat, so I passed. You also get to take your catch home as filets, which is cool.
Probably the most unexpected thing about the whole experience was how messy the whole operation is. The bait have their bellies sliced open so that they can attract fish better, so as soon as the bait begins to warm up in the open sun, you find yourself covered in stinking fish blood and guts. And because everyone is hooking their bait through the eyeballs, the eyes tend to fall out and scatter all over the place. Definitely not for the squeamish. (One person on the boat did get sick, but I think it was seasickness-related.)
Also interesting is the way they de-hook the dogfish. A member of the crew is constantly walking around, and when someone catches a dogfish, the crew member lifts it into the boat, steps on it to hold it still, yanks the hook out of its mouth, and tosses it back into the ocean.
In all, I liked deep sea fishing. If I were to do it again, I would definitely make sure I only did a half day (we were originally going to do a whole day, but car problems caused us to miss the boat). I would also make sure I wore really crappy clothes, since it’s so messy.
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