[General Stalin]

I grew up deep sea fishing in New England. Cod, Haddock, Pollock, Hake, Wolffish, Bluefin Tuna, Albacore, and during the warmer months Stripers, Blue Fish, and Mackerel. My first job as a kid was working on a commercial charter boat. 75-footer off the coast of Southern NH doing all-day and half-day trips.

I haven't freshwater fished since I was a really young. Now that I currently live in a landlocked place I'll have to give it a go.

[komatiite]

^hey General Stalin what is Albacore fishing in the Atlantic like? I tried two years ago (Sept 2014) in the Pacific off the northern coast of Vancouver island but got skunked. I used these big ass weighted hoochies trolling shallow, pretty fast troll speed, using regular salmon mooching rod setups. I was like a couple miles offshore which may be too close. I had never tried for them before but earlier that year I was at a dock in Vancouver and a bunch of Japanese dudes in suits were at some guys boat with core drills taking samples of the catch for Sushi restaurants, I asked the boat charter captain what he did and was pretty surprised tuna were there and abundant, catchable even for sport fishers like me.

Any PNW guys ever Trolled for albacore?

[realologist]

(07-13-2016 11:50 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  

I grew up deep sea fishing in New England. Cod, Haddock, Pollock, Hake, Wolffish, Bluefin Tuna, Albacore, and during the warmer months Stripers, Blue Fish, and Mackerel. My first job as a kid was working on a commercial charter boat. 75-footer off the coast of Southern NH doing all-day and half-day trips.

I haven't freshwater fished since I was a really young. Now that I currently live in a landlocked place I'll have to give it a go.

Your in Colorado right?

Ive only visited but I know in the mountain streams, rivers and lakes they have a ton of rainbow trout. Caught and cooked many in the same day myself.

[Sidney Crosby]

(07-13-2016 01:43 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

^hey General Stalin what is Albacore fishing in the Atlantic like? I tried two years ago (Sept 2014) in the Pacific off the northern coast of Vancouver island but got skunked. I used these big ass weighted hoochies trolling shallow, pretty fast troll speed, using regular salmon mooching rod setups. I was like a couple miles offshore which may be too close. I had never tried for them before but earlier that year I was at a dock in Vancouver and a bunch of Japanese dudes in suits were at some guys boat with core drills taking samples of the catch for Sushi restaurants, I asked the boat charter captain what he did and was pretty surprised tuna were there and abundant, catchable even for sport fishers like me.

Any PNW guys ever Trolled for albacore?

I've never done it but have talked to quite a few people that have. If you find the fish they say it's easy and you can't keep them out of the boat.

They say the hassle is bleeding them out right away, having the right amount of ice etc. and worrying about the weather. Being 20-30+ miles offshore is a lot different than being 10 minutes away from the marina or boat launch.

[General Stalin]

(07-13-2016 01:43 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

^hey General Stalin what is Albacore fishing in the Atlantic like? I tried two years ago (Sept 2014) in the Pacific off the northern coast of Vancouver island but got skunked. I used these big ass weighted hoochies trolling shallow, pretty fast troll speed, using regular salmon mooching rod setups. I was like a couple miles offshore which may be too close. I had never tried for them before but earlier that year I was at a dock in Vancouver and a bunch of Japanese dudes in suits were at some guys boat with core drills taking samples of the catch for Sushi restaurants, I asked the boat charter captain what he did and was pretty surprised tuna were there and abundant, catchable even for sport fishers like me.

Honestly most of the time I caught them was by accident using a 12-16 oz silver cod jig. They are big time school fish so you gotta find 'em, but they will get into a feeding frenzy and will eat anything in that event. If trolling you should get a chum line going.

I'm more experienced fishing for bluefin but I'm not sure how similar they are. We would chum and use live bait. Use small pollock, mackerel, or whiting. Stick a tuna hook right through it's back, toss it out, and let it swim lame and injured no weights.

[Kona]

(07-14-2016 01:11 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  

(07-13-2016 01:43 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

^hey General Stalin what is Albacore fishing in the Atlantic like? I tried two years ago (Sept 2014) in the Pacific off the northern coast of Vancouver island but got skunked. I used these big ass weighted hoochies trolling shallow, pretty fast troll speed, using regular salmon mooching rod setups. I was like a couple miles offshore which may be too close. I had never tried for them before but earlier that year I was at a dock in Vancouver and a bunch of Japanese dudes in suits were at some guys boat with core drills taking samples of the catch for Sushi restaurants, I asked the boat charter captain what he did and was pretty surprised tuna were there and abundant, catchable even for sport fishers like me.

Honestly most of the time I caught them was by accident using a 12-16 oz silver cod jig. They are big time school fish so you gotta find 'em, but they will get into a feeding frenzy and will eat anything in that event. If trolling you should get a chum line going.

I'm more experienced fishing for bluefin but I'm not sure how similar they are. We would chum and use live bait. Use small pollock, mackerel, or whiting. Stick a tuna hook right through it's back, toss it out, and let it swim lame and injured no weights.

There isn't much of the old school art left in any form of tuna fishing. Its all technology.

The same people that make submarine hunting equipment make fish finders.

I can just cruise around until I see a school and roll slowly through dragging the most basic lure and land an ahi.

The art part of it now is putting the tech stuff to work.

Aloha!

[General Stalin]

My ideal fishing is dropping bait in shallow water, seeing fat striped bass gobble it up, sticking a slimy clam belly on a small black barbed hook, 20 lbs. test line, open faced reel, light angling rod, let the weight of the bait slowly sink the hook into the water, watch a striper snatch it up, wait for him to swallow the bait and BAM! Set that hook and fight it out. Bring her in, bleed it out, clean up, the grill it with salt, pepper, and lemon - or fry it up with some homemade batter.

[Zona]

I visited family about a month ago and managed to squeeze in some good fishing over the course of a couple outings. We caught 2 walleyes, 3 crappies, 22 eatin' size blue gills, and a few northerns that are always fun to catch even though we don't eat them. Made for a nice little fish fry, but it it reminded me of how much I hate cleaning fish.

The older I get, the more I want to get back to that sort of outdoors lifestyle. Nothing better than being out on a pristine lake in the north woods, cooler full of sandwiches and beer, and just enjoying the sound of water lapping up against the boat, punctuated by the occasional loon call. You can't beat the serenity of nature.

[heavy]

I hunted growing up...pheasants, deer with bow, deer with shotgun. I didn't fall in love with it young and will probably never be big into it, but I got the invite to go up to some good private land with a cottage, backs up to a National Forest, so I hit up craigslist and FB marketplace...

Bought a nice used Mathews solo cam bow, whole package with case, arrows, loaded with drop away arrow rest, nice sights, and all the fixins for $200. Then found a like new my-size scentlok insulated camo pants and coat for $45. Could sell them both for more than I paid probably.

The bows these days (and mine might be 8 years old) are so awesome compared to what I grew up with. Pulling back 60 lbs never felt so easy, and I'm guessing it's throwing darts at 300 fps.

I almost got a crossbow, but decided I like shooting a bow with friends as much as I like killing things with it, so I went compound.

What I could get into, and I don't hear much about this but it sounds fun, is early-fall squirrel hunting with a bow. Seems like it would be a good mix of precision archery and stealth with the fun of hunting dumber animals where you can bag a bunch of em. Then makin some trips south for boar killing.

I'm pretty damn excited about getting out into the woods again.

[Bluto]

I did a lot of river and pond fishing when I was a kid with my Grandfather. These days I really want to get into Fly Fishing if I ever want to fish again. That seems more of a challenge to me. As far as hunting goes, I went out once for pheasant hunting with a second cousin and my dad. I really did like it, but whenever I broached the subject of hunting again with Dad, it was always something that we planned but never pulled the trigger on. These days I would like to go out, but right now I have other priorities in my life. Should things change for the better, than I am all for going out once again.

[PUA_Rachacha]

I learned to hunt when I was young from my dad. I started shooting skeet when I was 10, went on my first youth hunt when I was 12. I'm pretty good with a shotgun, ok with a rifle, horrible with a pistol.

We hunted primarily duck and pheasant. I'm from Upstate NY, and waterfowl hunting was (and still is) excellent, given the abundance of small lakes and cropland. Pheasant has unfortunately died out of the Northeast, so we would hunt stocked roosters.

My dad purposely got a yellow lab with strong hunting lineage, and he and I trained her to hunt when she was a puppy. I was 10 at the time. This dog was a good dog at home, but a monster out in the field. Could retrieve any duck or goose, and we taught her to point pheasants. Would jump 15' from a dock into the water. Unfortunately she got brain cancer when she was 10 and passed quickly. My mom still blames me and my dad for pushing that dog too hard (we hunted a lot in December when it was really cold out), but frankly, the dog wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

That time period from when I was 10 to 20 (the time period that the dog was alive) will likely be the best time of my life. My dad was also alive then too and healthy. Weekends would consist of sports and hunting. This was back in the early to mid 90s, when the world just felt like a different place versus now.

After my dad passed when I was 28 I had no one else to go hunting with. I also haven't lived in Upstate for 20 years now, although it will always be home. I still go hunting occasionally, and I fish yearly with my high school buddies for smallmouth bass. I've been trying to convince my wife to move to Upstate, partially so that I can reconnect with the hunting and fishing that I loved when I was a child.

[General Stalin]

Great bump - since last posting in here I have gotten into hunting on CO. Went on an elk hunt last year, and also went out for duck and geese. Got some ducks last year. Went duck and dove hunting so far this year and I've got another elk hunting trip coming up next month. I like it a lot, most specifically I like back country spot and stalk - hiking out into huge country, glassing landscape, finding animals, and putting a stalk on them. It's hard and has quite a learning curve but I'm excited to get better at it. Hoping I get something this year. Might also go for deer in December.

[Bluto]

(10-29-2018 10:50 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  

Great bump - since last posting in here I have gotten into hunting on CO. Went on an elk hunt last year, and also went out for duck and geese. Got some ducks last year. Went duck and dove hunting so far this year and I've got another elk hunting trip coming up next month. I like it a lot, most specifically I like back country spot and stalk - hiking out into huge country, glassing landscape, finding animals, and putting a stalk on them. It's hard and has quite a learning curve but I'm excited to get better at it. Hoping I get something this year. Might also go for deer in December.

"Hike and hunt" like you are mentioning is something that I really want to do. A friend of mine told me that he used to hunt like that when he was in Upstate NY out in the Adirondack's.(no idea if they do that now)

[heavy]

Didn't get anything guys. But I did stumble across this old cartoon...

Ah for the old days when cartoons (and tv shows in general) played on men - women dynamics.

[xmlenigma]

No Hunters / Trail cam people around anymore?

[General Stalin]

I love hunting but I don't get trail cams, man. I mean, I get them but thats too much tech for me honestly, and local fish and game agencies are starting to think so as well as some states won't allow them and some that do put very specific restrictions on them. I get that they are efficient, but I don't think they are very sporting. It's one step behind using drones to track game.

[General Mayhem]

I don't use trail cams either. I love hunting, but I am not about to be spending my time hanging trail cams and checking them all year round. Maybe it's because I'm a shitty trophy hunter.

My big obsession is archery. That's where all my time goes.

[Garuda]

Wonder about the impact of trail cam bans on research programs.

Fishing is my forte and this thread just reminded me I still need to catch a muskie. Red devils seem to work the best after all these years.

[General Stalin]

Hunting and fair-chase laws do not apply to apply to environmental research as far as I know. Scientists can capture animals, sedate them, run tests on them, put tracking tags on them, and release them back in the woods.

[scotian]

I went out moose hunting a couple of weeks ago with a good native friend of mine in the foothills of the Rocky mountains and we got one. It was so easy to find a moose that it's almost not even hunting, we just drove around in his truck with a couple of loaded 30-06s and after about tens minutes off the highway on a dirt road, we spotted one. My buddy put it in park; got out and shot it. The moose fucked off after being shot so we followed the trail of blood for a couple of hundred meters before my buddy, who is a skilled hunter, decided to let it go because he said if we chased it the moose would just keep running whereas if we just left him, he would lay down and bleed out. So we waited a bit then about an hour later, found it laying down so my friend shot it again in the head.

I'm still learning how to hunt large game; learning how to gut them and properly dress them-it's really important not to fuck up the meat by puncturing their shit bags with the knife. So after killing it, I ripped it open from arsehole to neck- ripped out all of the organs, intestines, etc and my buddy showed me how to take it all out without fucking it up. I got some moose shit on my face in the process as I cut away the heart, liver and two kidneys. I chopped off it's head which was quite mangled after being shot twice and we left that and the guts on the ground. We then stuffed a bunch of snow in it's open, empty belly then strapped it onto the quad and took it all back to the truck then hanged it up in the garage. The next day my buddy cut me off a fucking mass portion of moose meat to take home, an entire leg, it must've weighed nearly 30 pounds, that's the best part of hunting-all the fresh, nutritious, healthy meat. That was his last moose of the year, he usually gets three every year, as a card carrying Eskimo, that's his right.

So hunting season is over until the fall and now it's all about fishing, not quite yet in Alberta as the lakes are just unfreezing now but in another 4-6 weeks, I should be catching some nice walleye. At some point I'd like to do some fishing in BC, Canada this summer. Back east my buddies in Nova Scotia are pulling in 30 pounder stripers aka sea bass, they migrate up the rivers to spawn and they can be pretty big, up to 50 pounds back there.

Anyone else stoked to go fishing?

[Luther]

Slice that moose thin Scotian and fry it in oil
with onions and spices. My girlfriend is native from northern Manitoba. They live on moose up there and that’s how her family always cook it. The walleye fishing up there is insane also, it’s not even sport. Not like down here in the south where there’s still lots of fish but it’s a challenge to catch walleye consistently. Still, Manitoba has some of the best freshwater fishing in the country.

[General Stalin]

Canada and Alaska is the fucking Mecca of moose hunting. That's a bucket list trip for me: Moose hunting up in the Alaskan Brooks Range. You can find Moose in Colorado but they aren't super common. I've seen more of them in NH and Vermont then out here. Sounds like an easy take Scotian. Congrats!

Big game can be very tough but very rewarding. I love it.

[Iconoclast007]

They may be legalizing moose hunting in finland thisbyear with a bow. They also have a population of whitetails that is thriving in southern finland. You can bowhunt WT in finland.

I live in Estonia now and we can only hunt small animals here with a bow, that may change soon to include wild boar and roe buck.

Im a bowhunter exclusively. Got an Elk in west USA last sept..

Europe is starting to change laws to allow bowhunting

Also you can hunt in New Zealand for basicly free on public land and that is on my bucket list. I want to bowhunt Fiordland for a wapiti stag hybrid. And a thar with a bow is very difficult. .

Belarus is also an untouched destination for bowhunters.

Im also into spearfishing and have combined debauchery trips with spearfishing with alot of succsess in Colombia, Mexico, Key West Florida.. My next spearfishing trip will be either Malta or Canary Islands.

[scotian]

Tell me more about your fishing experience in Colombia please. Mine was mediocre, I flew from Medellin to Bahia Solano and paid a local guy $250 to take me out for a half day, it was actually very nice out on the water and we did catch a few tuna and one or two doradas (mahi-mahi) but the gear was shit. I had a much better experience in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico-same price, way better boat, gear, etc. I went out with another fisherman in Bahia Solano to catch tuna by hand, paid him $30 for a couple of hours, that was actually really fun, those little tunas were tasty.

(04-20-2019 11:16 AM)Iconoclast007 Wrote:  

They may be legalizing moose hunting in finland thisbyear with a bow. They also have a population of whitetails that is thriving in southern finland. You can bowhunt WT in finland.

I live in Estonia now and we can only hunt small animals here with a bow, that may change soon to include wild boar and roe buck.

Im a bowhunter exclusively. Got an Elk in west USA last sept..

Europe is starting to change laws to allow bowhunting

Also you can hunt in New Zealand for basicly free on public land and that is on my bucket list. I want to bowhunt Fiordland for a wapiti stag hybrid. And a thar with a bow is very difficult. .

Belarus is also an untouched destination for bowhunters.

Im also into spearfishing and have combined debauchery trips with spearfishing with alot of succsess in Colombia, Mexico, Key West Florida.. My next spearfishing trip will be either Malta or Canary Islands.

[Iconoclast007]

I fucking killed it out of bahia solano and El Valle. I was spearfishing exclusively.I only freedive while spearfishjng amd train hard before my trips.

I paid a guy in el valle $5 usd and 1/2 my fish to clean them for a day to paddle me around in a canoe and got reef fish like snapper and a nice 35lb cubera snapper whjch is like a snapper on steroids with huge teeth!

Then I hired a boat to take me up by the panama border it cost about 500 and i literally filled up the boat with fish. Yellowfin tuna, Mahi, amberjack over 50lb, 40lb cubera snapper, rooster fish, we ran out of room for putting fish and then I dove scuba on an old wreck.

I stayed at this really cool guys hotel. His name is enrique and hes a solid dude. Ypu can trust him. His wife cooked me 3 meals a day of the best colombian cuisine and grilled my fish etc total for room and board was 40 per day.

Ive been there like 5 times now. I love the place. The pacific coast of colombia will always have a fond place in my memory.

You have to bring your own gear to colombia.

Scotian, i have seen you post about Isla Mujeres as well. Some of the best fishing in th e world is based out of that island. A little north where the guld stream mixes and dumps with the guld has the highest concentration pf marine life I have ever seen. The guy I dove with there holds multiple pelagic spearfishj g world records for multiple species!!!