The collision of fishing interests came Saturday night into Sunday morning, out along Jeffreys Ledge, ground zero for the extraordinarily hard bluefin tuna bite that unfolded in the waters off Cape Ann throughout the middle of October.

As had been the case all week, bluefin tuna fishermen had flocked to the area to get their share of the bounty of blue fin being hauled on a daily basis from the Atlantic Ocean, an autumnal tuna harvest well beyond anything that has been seen in these waters for at least a decade.

But on Saturday, the tuna guys got some company. The mid-water herring trawlers, freed from the restrictions imposed by a state-mandated spawning closure in Area 1A, joined the hunt, looking for their own bite on the huge bait school of herring that had helped lure the tuna in the first place.  

“We were fishing around 3 o’clock in the afternoon when they started coming from all directions,” said Nat Moody, captain of the First Light. “There were 10 boats and they started moving through the tuna boats, looking for the biggest (herring) biomass.”

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