This weekend might not offer the fishing opportunities that could have been. After a week of calm, hot almost glassy days with some decent offshore action, it rather looks like Ophelia’s passage to our east will put a damper on any weekend plans there may have been.Those who enjoy the luxury of being able to take off on weekdays and head out on the briny might want to start thinking about Monday or Tuesday. Often after a bout of rough weather, the fishing livens up considerably and some great action can be had. Best of all, there are good numbers of wahoo around as well as fair numbers of tuna including a bit of unexpected variety.A troller last week happened to catch a tuna that he corrected identified as a big-eye tuna. Bigeye tuna are found spread pretty well through the western Atlantic Ocean and have been recorded from Bermuda on a number of occasions. They do attain large sizes (up to 300 pounds or more) although no such large specimens have been caught here. Actually, that could be a “yet” because they almost undoubtedly do pass through the Bermuda zone.One must suspect that they are caught more often than people think because it doesn’t take too much to misidentify the species. It is not unlike a yellowfin although there are a couple of major differences that should start you thinking, should you ever encounter one.As the name suggests, this species does have an eye larger than the yellowfin. This is probably an adaptation for living down deeper where light is limited and a larger eye is a useful for making the best use of what light there is. It probably also accounts for the fact that many bigeyes are caught throughout their range either early morning or on into the evening when surface waters exhibit light levels similar to those found at depth. With only a very few fishing here at dawn or dusk, this helps to explain the infrequency of their occurrence here.The other difference is in the fins. Where the Allison or yellowfin has elongated bright yellow fins, the bigeye’s, although not too differently coloured, are nowhere near the length that you would expect on a similar-sized yellowfin. The meat quality is also rather like a yellowfin’s, so unless someone is really paying attention, probably more than a few such fish are lumped in as yellowfins.Anyway to return to the fishing that lies ahead, live baiting is really popular and is paying off with some nice catches. It has long been accepted that the live baits tend to catch a larger class of fish and while there haven’t been any record-breakers there have been some nice fish taken recently. One such notable was an 84-pounder caught off the South Shore earlier this week. By any standard, that is one nice wahoo!For once, or so it seems, there is no shortage of live baits around. They seem to be most numerous on Bermuda’s Edge but there are enough on the Banks to ensure a ready supply. Most of the bait is juvenile mackerel, often referred to as “frigate”, for no sensible reason but there are some baby blackfin mixed in as well. Both species are easily caught on daisy chains, with multiple catches being the norm.And that is usually where the problem arises. It is quick and easy to have a couple of live-bait rigs ready to go, but few boats want to be bothered with having more than two such lines set. The usual tactic is to set one down on a deep troll and fish the other from the outrigger. All this in an effort to avoid the tangles that occur when slow trolling. Anyone who has not the experience of trying this form of fishing would be amazed to see the “tangulations” that mysteriously occur even when the boat is travelling in a straight line. Minimising the number of lines and separating them spatially seems to be the best bet but even that has been known to come a cropper.Having succeeded in getting things set out and awaiting the first customer, there is another problem for most of us - how to keep the rest of the baits alive. A few boats have the luxury of a large capacity live well or a running water system in which the small mackerel will last for a couple of hours (robins will last a lot longer if they can swim in circles, however small). The mackerel don’t last long out of water and they need to keep the water flowing over their gills. This latter aspect has a lot to do with the rigging technique with some rigs working a lot better than others, but this is not the issue here.One of the simplest ways to keep the baits alive is to continue to tow them behind the boat, usually close up to the transom. There are two problems here though. All too often the hooks finally tear out of their mouths and they are lost. A solution to that used by some people is to have an “alternative” daisy chain with snap swivels instead of hooks. The little fish are then taken off the daisy chain hooks and snapped on through the mouth to the snap swivel daisy chain. That can then be dragged behind the boat with the baits far less likely to make good their escapes.A worse scenario occurs when a wahoo or other predator bypasses the live baits set out with iron enrichments in the form of hooks and merely steals a bait off the daisy chain. Basically, there isn’t much that can be done about that. Call it bad luck if you will.Something else that works but isn’t often done anymore, is to use dead baits along with the live ones. When the mackerel aren’t lasting long but you still have a couple of live ones out, think about dragging a dead whole mackerel rigged up in the same basic fashion. Obviously, it is the vibrations being put out by the live baits and their relative inability to swim that gets the predator’s attention; but when it comes flying in at a great rate of knots, it probably relies on its eyesight to pick out the target. For this reason, an already dead mackerel, splashing in the wake, is enough to get the predator’s attention and become the target of the attack.The usual position of preference is on a short-to-medium length outrigger but don’t be afraid to splash a dead mackerel right in the white water immediately behind the boat. You might get a surprise every now and again and find yourself on the end of some very Tight lines!!!