It sure looks like winter is hell bent on coming early to the northeastern United States. We can be rightfully thankful that the weather has given us a miss, even though we have had a sampling of wind, rain and thunder. Nothing to cause more than minor inconveniences but plenty enough to sound the death knell for sport fishing for the rest of this year.All that is a bit unfortunate because there will still be some good days and occasions when the fish will please. Where the problem comes in for most of us is that the fishable days tend to coincide with work days and weekends seem to attract the passage of fronts and other misery.There is also not a lot of information emanating from the commercial fishery because, although some do work the finfish, the lobster is the catch of choice at the moment and the area where effort is concentrated.Working the Banks is producing some bottom fish but the glory days of that type of fishing are long gone, probably forever. It is possible to collect a few hinds, coneys and other desirables with there always being a long shot at a monkey rockfish, especially if yoy are working close to the Edge of the drop-off..Those who have taken to the belief that there are no fish around the Island at present may take some encouragement from an effort earlier this week by novice angler Nikki Thomas. While fishing on Mark Terceira’s Hooked Up, she used a live robin as bait only to have a hefty Allison take it and put her to some rather strenuous work. Strenuous for a first-timer it must have been because the fish, once boated, tipped the scales at a very creditable 92 pounds!The odd aspect of this is that the catch was made off to the northeast of the Island, not a place that gets a whole lot of working over at this time of the year and not where one would expect to encounter yellowfins. Naturally, schools of tuna occur where and when they please and some winters have seen quantities of yellowfin off the East End well into January and February.The fact that a fish was caught down there strongly suggests as that there must be others; after all, you are unlikely to find a tuna roaming the ocean on its own. They are school fish with the schools usually being made up of fish of the same general size. While the whole idea of large schools of tuna running down north have usually associated with August, enough changes have taken place in recent years to make an occurrence such as this well within reality. So, should the weather cooperate it might well be worth a run down that way.Anything resembling a decent tide would allow for chumming and if you can get the robins up not only will any tuna in the area be pleased to assist but there will be some wahoo around as well. Many large wahoo have been taken down north, particularly during the so-called off-season or winter months. If everything else fails on the surface, there are bottom fish to be had and the ambers and bonitas often please as well. Yellowtail snappers can be a bit of a speciality but they live there too, and in good numbers. Given the large average size of the yellowtails here, it doesn’t take too many of them to make the fish box look pretty impressive. Just remember that they can be caught off the bottom fairly consistently and you really don’t need to do a whole lot of chumming and you can leave the sand home.Speaking earlier of yellowfin, there has been lots of discussion in the wake of the latest application for an IGFA world record for yellowfin tuna. Granted that a yellowfin over 400 pounds is massive, we locals have distanced ourselves from the sheer mass by concentrating on our accomplishments on the lighter classes of tackle. The relative abundance of school (25 pounders) — sized tuna on up to mid-size (60-80 pounds) made the use of 12 to 30-lb test lines the mainstay of Bermuda sports fishing. And true we have quite a few nice marks in our own record books: 47lbs on 6-lb test, 63lbs on 8-lb test, 99 plus on 12-lb test, 113 on 16-lb test and 136 on 20-lb test, to name a few.But what really blows those out of the water is a very recent 20-lb test world record set in South African. The fish weighed 235lbs 5 oz! Knowing how a hundred pounder can put a bend in 50-lb test tackle and not even wanting to think about what a larger fish will do on even the heaviest tackle, this present mark seems unassailable and even impossible. In fact, were anyone here to try to achieve anything like that, they would have their work cut out for them. First off, two hundred pound plus yellowfin are nothing short of rare here and most large tuna are caught while trolling for marlin. That means that the chances of the tackle being anything less than about 80-lb test are somewhere between slim and none. Throw in the fact that the bottom is a long way from the surface here and your money would have to go on the fish getting the better of any such encounter. This again raises the question of just how did that fish get itself caught? Perhaps additional detail will come to light, but it isn’t likely to be a feat that will be replicated here.With the promise of another blustery weekend ahead, there isn’t likely to be fishing by amateurs even though the fact that it is a long holiday weekend may open up some possibilities for Monday.To tell the truth, there won’t be much fishing bar the wahoo suddenly going berserk down on Argus as they did one winter some years ago. So willing to please where they that all sorts of boats, professional and some that should not have been out there, punched their way out into head seas and 30 knot winds to grab a piece of the action. By the time the so-called spring run should have occurred, you couldn’t give a wahoo away. You can dream of such things: freezers were full, markets saturated and a new meaning brought to the whole concept of winter Tight lines!!!