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IN THIS ISSUE: Dealer News & Events | Owners’ Club News | The 191 CE Coastal Explorer | Letters & Photos | Grady Buddies
Express 330 Owner Greets 2015 with Double Giant Bluefin Catch Jason Davis and crew, including his eleven-year-old son, Hunter, bested all odds by bringing in a 785-pound bluefin tuna aboard his Express 330, The Grady Bunch, on January 1, 2015, followed with a 683-pound bluefin on January 2. Both were caught out of Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. What a way to greet the new year! Grady-White’s Express 330 has always been known as a premiere fishing platform, offering a spacious cockpit, easily accessed rod and tackle storage and a large livewell capacity. Here’s proof! JASON DAVIS AND SON, HUNTER, with their New
Year’s Day bluefin tuna that weighed in at 785 pounds.
“We fish year ’round out of North Carolina’s Beaufort Inlet for other species, but my husband decided he wanted to try bluefin tuna fishing this year,” writes Wendy Davis, from Fuquay-Varina, NC. “After several days on the water with a few shorts (sub-legal size fish), on January 1, 2015, his crew hooked up and landed a 785-pound, 117-inch bluefin. It was amazing, but it didn’t stop there. The next morning, 12 minutes after lines were out, they hooked up and landed a 683-pound, 109-inch bluefin!” Pete O‘Donnell was the man on the line for the first day’s fish, hooking up three miles out from the west of Cape Lookout Shoals in 50 feet of water with naked ballyhoo. After an hour battle on a #80 reel that was nearly spooled, Jason Davis harpooned the giant at the stern while Ray Watkins captained the boat and Hunter took pictures. The second day, as reported in the North Carolina Sportsman magazine,
lines pulling skirted ballyhoo were in for five minutes when a reel screamed. “The fish took out 2,000 feet in a minute and a half,” said Davis. “It was like we were hooked to a sports car that had floored the gas.” This tuna took four hours to conquer. O’Donnell got it to the boat, where the fish took a look at the crew and bee-lined under the boat, wrapping line around a propeller. Watkins cut the engine, tilted the motor, and O’Donnell gave Davis some slack line while he leaned down and unwrapped the line in four-foot seas. Davis fished with a commercial license that requires the fish be sold, and commercially caught fish are not eligible for the state record book. The current North Carolina bluefin tuna record is 805 pounds, caught off Oregon Inlet in 2011. Later in January 2015, another commercial fisherman off Morehead City, NC, brought in a 1,005 bluefin. Big times! “I am so happy that my husband and son were able to do such a monumental thing together, and in their first season of trying,” reports a happy Wendy Davis.
JASON DAVIS, PETE O’DONNELL AND RAY WATKINS
battled the second day’s bluefin aboard Express 330, The Grady Bunch.
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