Big eyes in the Wilmington!

We set out yesterday on a for fun trip with the boys scouting for the Mid Atlantic 500 coming up, we waited till around noon to head out and went up north to the Wilmington in search of big eyes, we had heard they were around and the conditions looked proper as you saw in yesterdays report. As we were passing through the Hot Dog on our way we daw whales loaded up so we stopped and tried chunking for about an hour at the Hot Dog but no luck so we kept moving north and stuck to our game plan. We got to the Wilmington around 3-330 and immediately missed a marlin bite, then slowly picked away at a few skippys, but we had tons of good marks and the whales were all stacked up feeding, so around 530-6pm we pulled in the trolling gear and tried dropping some heavy jigs down on spinning rods, and to. our surprise Willie got tight 3 different times!!! Pulled the hook on all 3, knowing what we know now we are thinking they must of been big eyes and we just had to light of tackle to handle those beasts lol but after 45 mins of jigging, we went back to trolling for prime time. Patience was key, we trolled and trolled and waited and waited but soon as that sun went below the horizon about 8-815 BAM the big one we landed crashed on a daisy chain right behind the boat, then a second rod went off, and then a 3rd! The 3rd one missed the stinger but we were tight on two! Jamie and Willie got to work, Willie had his probably 50 feet from the boat when it decided to try and run one more time and a Sterling spreader bar failed and broke at a place where it def shouldn’t have, we were not happy about that to say the least but shit happens. After 20 mins Jamie was getting gassed (being his first tuna ever but he did great!) so I (Taylor) took over and 10-15 mins later we had it next to the boat and stuck a gaff in it! The one we landed was bigger than the one we lost and we only used about 17lbs of drag so there is no reason that bar should of broke the way it did, but we impressed ourselves getting the bigger fish to the boat in 30 mins! Hell of a night can’t wait to get out and do it again! There is also a nice band of blue water east of the Baltimore that’s holding mahi and billfish, and then the blue water we were fishing that stretches from the Spencer and goes down into the Wilmington and is slowly moving south. That water should stay in the Wilmington for at least another 2-4 days but we will be keeping a close eye on things as we get ready for the Mid Atlantic 500. Wilmington is def the place to be for tunas, Baltimore for mahi and billfish. Inshore guys, I’d try the Hot Dog, Parking Lot or Hambone, we saw lots of life t the Hot Dog and got a report of a wahoo caught trolling between Parking Lot and Hambone, there’s been quite a few wahoo around so that can be a fun fish to target for those fishing inside the 100 line! Good luck and tight lines y’all! Check back in tomorrow!