I had just cracked open a drink when the fish came up. I set the brew on the bait tank, buckled in as a tuna slurped the bait, lifted the 80-wide Tiagra out of the holder and went to work. My beer was still ice cold when we gaffed the 192-pound yellowfin.

That short, effective fight depended on the 200-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader, 40 pounds of drag and a true winch of a reel. But the gear doesn’t matter if you don’t use it right, and that means using its power to hurt tuna instead of yourself. I’m a big guy and I’ve caught hundreds of tuna over 100 pounds, but size doesn’t matter. I’ve seen little old ladies use the right techniques and catch fish much bigger than I ever have. My friend caught a 300-pound yellowfin on stand-up gear when he was 78.

Use a Harness and Pad to Fight Big Tuna

The key is a good harness and pad, and the ability to use it. One of my favorites is from AFTCO, designed by Greg Stotesbury. Stotesbury’s stand-up experience, like mine, is grounded in the San Diego long-range fleet. No offense, East Coasters, but most of you don’t know how to use a harness. Here’s how it works.

If you learn anything here it should be this: When fighting a fish, you should feel all the force transferred by the harness from the point of your hips down. You want the belt around your butt, not the small of your back.

In preparation, wear the harness before the bite. Wait until the fish is solidly hooked and pulling drag before you put the rod in the belt and clip in. Many fish are lost early when folks fumble with their gear instead of fighting the fish. Once you are fastened to the fish, attitude is everything. Stay calm and relaxed. Don’t let adrenaline and bad form hurt you.

How to Fight Tuna in a Fishing Harness

Proper form means good posture: Put your left hand on the reel to guide the line, with your right hand on the handle. Keep your back straight, and bend your knees enough to distribute the pressure across the tops of your quads and your backside.

Modern composite rods do all the work when kept at right angles to the rail. When the tip comes up, wind it back down. If you can’t turn the handle, switch the reel to low speed. Can’t keep up? Go to high speed. Don’t impart wild pumping motions. Instead, focus on the rod tip. Call out deep color when you see it, and wind the fish up to the gaff.

Safety Tips for Fighting Big Tunas

A couple of safety notes should be added. Every tuna is an individual, and where the hook ends up influences how the fish acts. Yellowfin tuna hooked in the upper jaw by the snout are notoriously squirrelly. You have to be prepared to react to the predictable and unpredictable, and that often means getting out of the harness.

Use S-hooks instead of clips to attach the harness to the reel lugs so you can get out quickly if necessary. And remember to back off the drag ­(gradually, don’t dump it into free-spool) when you need to get the rod out of the gimbal pad for maneuvers such as keeping the line out of the props.

How to Gain Line When Fighting Big Tuna

When you sit back and put on a lot of pressure, a fish will often run out high in the water column. Enjoy the fact that now the fish is on the losing end of the energy equation. This is the only time you can take a breather. When the fish stops, bear down on it. Try to get a turn on the handle, going to low gear if necessary.

Tuna will often respond to the ­pressure by diving in the direction of the boat, which provides you the opportunity to win back a bunch of line with no more effort than turning the handle. Be ready to go into high gear when the fish sounds, and take that easy line.

Once the fish goes into the final stage of the fight — straight up and down — it’s time to really put on the heat. Stay in one spot and keep the rod straight out from the rail. The tuna’s tail beats are reflected in the pumps of the rod tip as the fish circles — the more pressure, the tighter the circle. The tip of the rod will come up as the fish leaves the inside (closest to the boat) of the circle. That’s when you get those precious feet of line with several quick turns of the handle to bring the tip back down and keep the fish moving up. Don’t waste energy by stubbornly trying to turn the handle when you stop gaining line.

Most important, stay relaxed so you reserve the burst of energy and sharpness of mind that is usually called for at the end of the fight. Sometimes, a truly mean fish will say to hell with this and bust a big move. The telltale is an irritated shake of the head. You have to be ready to respond and follow. It’s usually over soon after that — one way or another.

The post Tuna Fishing with Stand Up Gear appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

That the ocean’s most advanced and highly developed swimming machines are also among the most popular of game fishes with the world’s saltwater angling enthusiasts is hardly a coincidence. As anglers, we have tremendous respect for the spirited fighting qualities of tunas — difficult to release, should we wish to, because they truly will fight their hearts out when hooked. So what is it that makes tunas the über-fish of our oceans? The more we learn about our favorite game fish, the more fascinating they are.

Are Mackerels Tuna? What Are True Tunas?

Tunas are part of the family Scombridae, which also includes mackerels, large and small. But there are tunas, and then there are, well, “true tunas.” Two groups (sometimes known as “tribes”) dominate the tuna clan. One is Thunnini, which is the group considered true tunas, characterized by two separate dorsal fins and a relatively thick body. The 15 species of Thunnini are albacore, bigeye, black skipjack, blackfin, bluefin (three species: Atlantic, Pacific, southern), bullet, frigate, kawakawa, little tunny, longtail, skipjack, slender and yellowfin.

The other tribe is Sardini; these tunas — the dogtooth tuna and several species of smaller true bonitos — are somewhat more mackerel-like (notably with a more elongated body and a row of sharp, conical teeth).

How do Tuna Swim so Fast and Hard?

Sport fishermen know that when they hook a large tuna, they’re in for a long, drawn-out, relentless battle. Nothing characterizes tunas more than their powerful, tireless swimming. In fact, these fish have no choice but to swim endlessly: As explained more thoroughly below, they’re ram ventilators, meaning forward motion is required as they move with mouth open to force water past their gills.

Most fishes, such as groupers, snappers and jacks, can remain motionless and respire by opening and closing their mouths to push water through their gills. Tunas have lost the ability to do that (even if they could, such small pushes of water wouldn’t offer their large gills the tremendous flow they require to supply their systems with oxygen). A suitable motto for tunas, then, is “swim or die.”

How tunas have evolved to move efficiently through the water is reflected in their design, both externally and internally. Of their fusiform body shape (tapering fore and aft), Sport Fishing Fish Facts expert Ben Diggles says, “Their almost-perfect hydrodynamic shape minimizes drag with a very low drag coefficient,” optimizing efficient swimming both at cruise and burst.

And these torpedoes are perfectly streamlined, their larger fins fitting perfectly into grooves so no part of these fins protrudes above the body surface. They lack the convex eyes of most fish; rather, a membrane covering tuna eyes remains flush with their heads, maintaining a surface with minimal drag. Keels and finlets in front of the tail provide stability and help reduce the turbulence in the water ahead of the tail.

Unlike most fishes with broad, flexible tails that bend to scoop water to move a fish forward, tunas derive tremendous thrust with thin, hard, lunate (moon-shaped) tails that beat constantly, capable of 10 to 12 or more beats per second. That relentless thrust accounts for the unstoppable runs that tuna make repeatedly when hooked.

As with other fast-swimming fishes, a primary limitation on top speed for tunas is cavitation, which at high speeds can slow them and even damage fins. (Cavitation is caused when negative pressure forms tiny air bubbles, which then collapse and form shock waves. Cavitation can damage the metal in propellers — and cause lesions in the fins of fish that swim “too fast,” such as tunas.)

Why Is a Tuna’s Meat Red?

While many of the characteristics that account for the tuna’s remarkable swimming ability are visible externally, some of the most astonishing adaptations are internal.

Certainly, that includes their extensive aerobic red muscle. Many fishes are ambush predators, relying on bursts of speed to feed but swimming slowly otherwise. Their bodies are mostly filled with white muscle — glycolytic fibers used in infrequent burst swimming. Tunas employ far more red muscle; their oxidative fibers prove ideal for long-haul, constant swimming without fatigue. Also, red muscle is full of myoglobin, which stores oxygen in the muscle tissues, for use as needed.

With so much red muscle demanding that much more oxygen, tunas’ gills — their organs for respiration, of course — are huge. For example, a tuna has seven to nine times more gill area for its size compared to relatively sedentary trout. And, not surprisingly, you’ve gotta have heart: Moving great amounts of oxygenated blood through their bodies requires tunas to have far larger hearts than most fish. Not only that, but another way tunas have advanced beyond most fishes — which have a constant heart rate — is their ability, like mammals, to vary their heart rate, maximizing efficiency.

Can Tuna Warm Their Bodies?

Arguably the most striking and sophisticated adaptation we can’t see — but science has revealed — is the ability of larger true tunas to heat certain areas of their bodies. They do this through what are known as the retia mirabilia (“wonderful net”), an ingenious counter-current vascular heat-exchange system. Basically, parallel veins and arteries exchange blood, allowing tunas to conserve metabolic heat via what is called regional endothermy, warming their red muscle tissue, brain, eyes and viscera well above ambient water temperatures.

This regional endothermy gives them the same metabolic advantage that Homo sapiens and other mammals enjoy. In fact, tunas couldn’t sustain the swim-or-die lifestyle nor be the relentless eating machines they are without that higher metabolic rate, allowing them to swim longer and faster, their brains and eyes to function better in cold water, and their viscera to digest more quickly and efficiently.

Further demonstrating the brilliance of their plumbing, larger tunas can shed excess heat from their bodies during periods of intense feeding (in essence, while doing wind sprints) via their retia mirabilia, which uses blood from gills cooled by ambient water to reduce body heat. This system also undoubtedly comes into play as one factor in the amazing endurance that hooked tunas show to resist their capture.

How Deep do Tuna Swim?

Much of the evolutionary success of tunas derives from their ability to transition from warm to cool waters in a way that most — less advanced, cold-blooded — fishes can’t manage.

Satellite tagging has revealed much about the feeding behavior and movements of large tunas, including their tendency to dive into deep, cold water. Scientists have documented that yellowfin feed at times in waters much deeper than once believed, but the bigeye is a champ in the deep-dive category, often feeding in waters exceeding 1,500 feet — and diving to more than 5,000 feet.

Apparently, these daytime deep divers are taking advantage of what’s known as the deep-scattering layer, a concentration of biomass (plankton and larger organisms) typically settling by day into 1,500 to 2,000 feet of water (which rises to or near the surface nightly). This is the same DSL in which swordfish feed during the day. Perhaps not so surprisingly, daytime swordy anglers have been hooking some large tuna while dropping deep.

The other abyss-loving tuna is the bluefin. What large yellowfin, bigeye and bluefin have in common that enables them to feed at great depths is body mass. Juveniles and smaller species of tuna, lacking that, lose body heat too rapidly to allow them to leave near-surface waters for long.

Heat is lost in the frigid waters at depth, but rewarming occurs when tunas move up into warmer waters — where heating occurs at 100 to 1,000 times the rate that it’s lost. (This may be facilitated with blood bypassing lateral heat exchangers, so blood warmed and oxygenated in the gills by ambient, warmer waters enters the red muscle directly.)

What large tunas have in common that encourages them to feed so deep is simply an abundance of food in these cold but productive waters.

How Far do Tuna Travel?

The same motivation to find more and more food accounts for far-ranging horizontal movements as well as vertical dives into colder waters. So, for example, in the North Atlantic, the world’s largest giant bluefin are caught at the most northerly edges of the species’ range — the Canadian Maritimes — and in the South Pacific, the largest giants come from the most southern part of the southern bluefin’s range — off New Zealand’s South Island. In both instances, only the great body mass of giants provides enough thermal inertia — a small enough ratio of surface area to volume to prevent rapid cooling — so they can take advantage of vast schools of prey.

Large tunas are truly superfish, at the zenith of evolutionary design and success as predators among the ocean’s fishes. Little wonder they’re among the very most popular targets worldwide among saltwater recreational fishermen. The more we as anglers understand these magnificent fish, the more we can appreciate the opportunity to fish for and catch them.

Is Disaster Imminent for Tunas?

Tunas occasionally make it into mainstream news, and when they do, the circumstances (for continued survival of the species) usually sound pretty dire. However, a scientist at the University of Washington, found that just 30 percent of commercial tuna stocks had an abundance below that which would produce maximum sustainable yield.

Recently, Atlantic bluefin tuna have made a noticeable comeback. And anglers are taking advantage of it. In particular, many Northeast area anglers have spent the summer months targeting tuna of all sizes, both inshore and far offshore.“ The abundance of tunas and their relatives has declined from pre-industrial levels, but in general, they are at sustainable levels,” said Maite Pons, Ph.D..

The post Common Questions About Tuna appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The most successful offshore anglers never leave the dock without pitch baits. Dead or alive, those baits can turn a fair day of fishing into an unforgettable one.

“Every single day I go in the ocean, if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of catching a marlin, I’ve got a pitch bait on. All day, every day,” says Capt. Matt Carter, who once ran charters out of North Carolina’s Oregon Inlet and now skippers private boats.

Carter, who fishes from Montauk, New York to Mexico, always keeps pitch baits rigged and ready because many fish show up unexpectedly. The baits also tempt fish that appear in a trolling spread or behind a daisy chain but show no interest in eating.

“If a gaffer dolphin comes in, you need your pitch bait to be able to catch it,” he explains. “If I’m fishing a 9/0 or 10/0 tuna bait, I promise you that if he comes in on a teaser, he’ll hit that pitch bait. And how many times are people tuna fishing and a small blue marlin or white marlin comes in and is all over the spreader bar, and everyone’s looking at it?

“They have the mindset, ‘We don’t need a pitch bait; we’re not marlin fishing.’ What do you do when that gaffer dolphin comes in? Or that sailfish? You know how hard it is to hook a sailfish on a big lure? I always have pitch baits ready to go if a sailfish, whitey or a blue comes in. I want to make the most of that opportunity.”

Have Pitch Baits Ready When Trolling

Pitch baits prove popular from coast to coast. California tuna fishermen, such as Capt. Ty Ponder, a private boat captain from San Diego, use live Pacific sardines. Spanish sardines rank as the No. 1 pitch bait for Florida captains such as Casey Hunt of Key West’s CN-it Adventures. A threadfin herring ranks as his second choice. Carter’s go-to pitch bait is a dead ballyhoo, which matches what he’s trolling.

“All trolling guys, whether they’re fishing for blue marlin, white marlin or sailfish on the East Coast pitch dead baits, and all live-bait guys pitch live baits,” Hunt says. “Most boats are set up to always troll or always live-bait. But if you’re trolling and you have some live bait, it’s a great weapon.”

Whether you pitch live or dead baits, always have a bait ready, and immediately drop it into the water when a fish shows, especially when you already have one fish hooked, captains say.

“If you’re fighting a sailfish, cast [a sardine] toward it, and a lot of times you’ll hook another sailfish right away,” Hunt says, noting that the technique works with other species, most notably dolphin, but also wahoo, tuna and marlin. “Even before you release it, have a guy cast a bait toward that fish.”

When he trolls at 15 knots for wahoo, for instance, he’ll slow the boat once he hooks a fish and ask an angler to cast a live goggle-eye with a wire leader, in case there’s another wahoo around. With dolphin, he waits to pitch a livey until the fish obviously snubs the trolled baits.

If he finds a school of dolphin, Hunt starts casting lures or jigs. When the fish lose interest, he switches to chunks of ballyhoo or bonito. When they stop biting the chunks, he deploys liveys. And before leaving a dolphin school, he drops a live goggle-eye deep, well below the school, in case a larger fish still lurks.

When targeting tuna, Hunt will watch for the first jump, “then just throw everything you’ve got in your spread, because the more baits you have in the water, the better,” he says. “We do a lot of that, or we cast popping plugs. That kind of gets blackfin and yellowfin tunas fired up, then we cast baits.”

Hunt says he also has tossed pitch baits to white marlin out of Harbor Island in the Bahamas. “We’re pulling baits, hook a white, and as he’s getting close to the boat, we flip out live goggle-eyes and hook another.”

Pitch Live Baits to Sailfish

Florida captains use pitch baits most often for sailfish because the sails usually travel in pods. Hunt also keeps at least one live pitch bait handy, hooked to a spinning outfit, for those times when sails pop up in a kite spread or when he spots a free-jumper.

“If you see one free-jumping, basically lock up all your reels, speed up the boat, and pull all your baits over to where you saw him,” he says. “If I know there are a lot of free-jumpers around, I like bridling kite baits through the nose. If we have to pick them up, it’s easier if they’re hooked in the nose instead of the back.

“If you’re running along and see a sailfish jumping, try to get ahead of him and cast three or four baits at him, even if he goes down. He might come back up and bring more fish with him.”

Ready With a Pitch Bait for Marlin

When he’s trolling for marlin, Carter never knows what might show up in his spread, so he always keeps two sizes of pitch baits on his boat. If the big blue appears but doesn’t eat, he pitches a horse ballyhoo on a 10/0 to 12/0 circle hook behind a Mold Craft chugger lure, a tactic that has caught 600-pound marlin. His smaller pitch bait for small marlin, sailfish and dolphin is a naked “dink” ballyhoo on a 7/0 circle hook.

“Every time I hook a fish, pitch baits go in the water,” he adds. “Everybody’s prospecting. We make 20 or 30 pitches every single day. Don’t be scared to throw it. I think a lot of recreational anglers don’t take advantage.”

When a blue marlin comes up in Carter’s spread, he slowly pulls the teaser to the boat. As the teaser comes in, his mate puts a pitch bait in the water. One tip for hooking a blue on a pitch bait: Don’t let it get too far behind the boat.

“You never let the pitch bait get past where the squid chain would be,” Carter says. “People have a tendency to drop back and back. I always keep it near the back of the boat, and I make the fish come to me. If he’s inside the short-rigger distance, then you’re way better off. Too far back, you can’t see how to feed it.”

He recalls one Mid-Atlantic tournament he fished, when he had a white marlin doubleheader on the two flat lines. His mate was hauling in a daisy chain when Carter glanced at the outside teaser and saw a 400- to 500-pound blue marlin.

Says Carter of another trip: “One time in the Dominican Republic, we hooked two white marlin, and as we caught them on the turn, we had the baits going out and hooked a sailfish. “As we were hooking the sailfish, we pitched a bait to a blue marlin. So we literally caught a grand slam in one turn.”

Targeting Tuna With Pitch Baits

Ponder says West Coast anglers typically target yellowfin tuna and yellowtail with pitch baits—although in the past few years, bluefin tuna to 300 pounds also have made the hit list.

When tuna fishing, he runs 10 to 100 miles offshore, where he focuses on known ridge areas or high spots. There he looks for kelp paddies and what he calls floating structure, which attract bait and gamefish. Temperature breaks of 1 to 3 degrees often draw bait to the cooler side; the gamefish stay along the warmer, clearer side of the break. In Southern California, a typical break might transition from 63 to 65 degrees or 65 to 67.

Ponder also looks for dipping or diving birds. During summer, pods of feeding common dolphin can indicate tuna. And he always keeps an eye out for surface-breaking tuna. When he finds promising conditions, he often trolls feathers—real and plastic—as well as deep-diving Rapala X-Rap swimming plugs.

“As soon as somebody gets a bite, the first thing we’re going to do is start chumming,” says Ponder, who tosses out one or two live sardines at a time to keep the school close.

He prefers to rig a 6- to 10-inch live sardine for pitching, although he also uses anchovies and mackerel. Ponder notes that it’s critical to handle a bait with care, taking it out of the livewell with a bait net so that it looks good, retains all its scales, and remains lively.

“When you pitch it in the water, you want it to run away from the boat immediately. That’s going to be ideal,” he says, adding that an underhand pitch works best. “An overhand cast stuns the sardine when it lands, and it doesn’t run. With an underhand pitch, the sardine is more likely to run away from the boat. If it runs hard, it’s likely to get bit.”

If the bait doesn’t swim away, Ponder doesn’t soak it. “I immediately flick it off [the hook], and I go right back to the well and get another bait. I want a bait that’s fired up and swims away to get that reaction bite.”

Feather the line as the sardine swims away to keep in touch with the bait. “I hate to see guys feeding line, and they get a bunch of slack, and they’re not feeling their bait. They feed out 100 yards, and they don’t even know that their bait is sitting straight under the boat.”

Pitch Bait Fishing Tactics

Even when pitching dead baits, keep that connection and you’ll score more hookups. With time, experience and dedication to the details, you’ll perfect that all-important sales pitch.

Capt. Casey Hunt of Key West, Florida, who kite-fishes with 20-pound Accurate conventional reels, suggests a 7-foot spinning rod and any brand of reel that holds 400 to 500 yards of fishing line for pitch-baiting.

He ties a Bimini twist in his 20-pound Momoi Diamond or Diamond Illusion main line, creating 10 inches of doubled line. With an Albright knot, he attaches a 15-foot leader of 30-pound Momoi Diamond fluorocarbon tied to an Eagle Claw 5/0 or 6/0 circle hook. He hooks or bridles live pitch baits through both lips so that the baits don’t fly off when cast.

While Hunt runs along a color change to set up a drift, each of his anglers stands ready with a baited spinning outfit. The prepared baits swim in either a 5-gallon bucket of water or a livewell. If Hunt sees a free-jumper, he can maneuver in front of the fish to let the anglers cast.

A Tuna Pitch Bait

To catch tuna in the 20- to 50-pound class, Capt. Ty Ponder of San Diego uses a 7-foot, 6-inch Okuma PCH Custom extra-heavy, 30- to 60-pound rod with Okuma Cavalla conventional two-speed reels in size 5 or 12.

He typically fishes 65- to 80-pound Sufix braided line with 6 to 100 feet of 30- to 50-pound Sufix Invisiline fluorocarbon leader. He uses shorter leaders to maintain sensitivity to the bite but extends them if fish grow skittish.

Ponder attaches the braid to the fluorocarbon with a John Collins knot, also known as the Royal Polaris knot, which he likes because it’s slimmer and seldom fails. He upgrades his tackle appropriately when bigger bluefin tuna come around.

He uses a San Diego jam knot to attach a VMC circle or J hook, which he matches to the size of the bait. “I personally never set the hook on a tuna, even with a J hook. I just reel the line tight and lift the rod tip.”

Ponder often nose-hooks live sardines when pitching them for tuna and yellowtail. He also hooks sardines in the back, just ahead of the dorsal fin, which makes them “look like a Rapala.” For a third option, he hooks the sardine in front of the anal fin so that the bait swims down and away from the boat.

The All Purpose Pitch Bait

Private-boat skipper Capt. Matt Carter uses 20- to 30-pound-class custom rods with Shimano Talica 20 or 25 conventional reels. He attaches 30-pound main line with an 80-pound top shot to a ball-bearing swivel crimped to a wind-on leader of 60- to 80-pound fluorocarbon. He snells the leader to a 7/0 circle hook baited with a dead, naked ballyhoo.

Carter keeps the rods handy in the rocket launcher or tower-leg rod holders, and the rigged ballyhoo rest in pitch-bait tubes filled with ice and salt water to keep the baits fresh. “Nothing’s worse than fishing all day and having the fish of a lifetime come up, and you’ve got a bait that’s been drying in the sun,” he says. “They won’t eat it.”

Carter notes that the tubes can be attached to a tower rod holder, a fighting chair or a rocket launcher, so they’re always in the right place when the time comes.

“No matter what you do, you have to get in the habit of having that pitch bait in the same location every time,” Carter says. “You don’t even have to think about it. My mate hears ‘right teaser,’ and he goes straight to that rod every time.”

The post The Perfect Pitch appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

It was a slow summer at Hudson Canyon off New York, but we were headed out anyway, because you can’t catch tuna when you’re dry on the dock. We weren’t halfway out when we saw life — a half-dozen whales rolling, and tails rising among what must have been 100 or more tightly packed bottlenose dolphin. Dozens of shearwaters flocked around the ­commotion. Extending outward for 100 square yards, storm petrels dabbed the blue 75-degree surface waters. The sonar screen read 180 feet.

One cast into the mayhem created instant action. As soon as the bail closed, a fish grabbed the lure, and the rod doubled over at an impossible angle. Line easily peeled off the reel against a good 30 pounds of drag. The mate looked over at me with a big smile on his face and said, “Well, I guess we’re not going to the canyon.”

Running way offshore for big pelagics is ingrained. Want to catch tuna? Hit the “deep,” the “edge,” the canyons. And whether you see life or empty ocean, deploy a spread and troll blindly for hours. But in recent years, most of the good fishing has occurred well inshore of the canyons, and trolling isn’t required.

Tuna Feed on Sand Eels

We owe this success to one thing, and one thing alone: sand lances, Ammodytes americanus (known locally as sand eels) — long, slender, 6- to 8-inch ­low-trophic-level fish with a pointy snout.

In past years, when the sand eels have shown up — usually by mid-June — they’ve appeared in extraordinary numbers. Anglers know about it pretty quickly because often the entire list of oceanic predators also find them. Not just those with fins, but those with wings as well. Everything appears to eat sand eels.

To be clear, this bait does not reside in deep water. As the name suggests, sand eels prefer relatively sandy habitat in 40 fathoms or shallower. They also burrow at night into the soft substrate and spend their days feeding on zooplankton. They’re not equipped to frequent deep, high-­pressure water, thus don’t expect to see big ­concentrations at the canyons.

Why do they gather, and why recently have they flooded the 20- to 40-fathom area from Maryland to New York from mid-June to mid-September? Those are more-difficult questions to answer, but it seems likely that the mass migration involves a food source. Adult and larval sand lances feed primarily on copepods (immature crustaceans) and other tiny animals, so they might be focused on a new zooplankton bloom.

Regardless of the reason, the ­sand eels now congregate so thickly that once you’re into them, you often can’t read bottom on your sounder. And it’s clear that when they’re abundant, they attract a host of predators — most important of which are bluefin and yellowfin tuna — that gorge on the smallish baits with reckless abandon.

Where to Find Sand Eels and Tuna

“It’s all about finding life when you make these midshore tuna runs,” says New Jersey charter captain Gene Quigley (shorecatch.com). “I’d say we look for whales more than anything, but there are certainly other indicators.”

Not only do whales and tuna feed on this same prey, but both bluefin and yellowfin tuna often swim directly beneath the whales, possibly slurping up stunned sand eels after a whale has lunge-fed.

“We look for [bottlenose] dolphin too,” Quigley continues. “Not just the rolling ones, but the ones that are clearly smashing sand eels.”

Finding cow-nosed rays in 150 to 200 feet of water in July or August might be one of the best tuna signs. “Man, you run across a school of cow-nosed rays, and you’re a fool not to stop on it,” says New York captain Cory Crochetiere. “Drop a jig under them, and it’s often an immediate hookup.”

On a clear, calm day, you can see rays pushing water when they’re on the surface. But often they swim 10 feet or more down. When they pass under your boat, they’re easy to see. For better or worse, rays also hit a jig or soft plastic.

Rays often appear accompanied by storm petrels, or what we call “tuna chicks”—small unassuming birds that seem to dance on the water. Just the presence of these birds, with or without the rays, can indicate sand eels, and subsequently tuna.

The petrels clearly don’t feed on sand eels. More likely they’re eating the same planktonic animals as the sand eels. A mother lode of storm petrels signals a mandatory stop, but even if you see just a half-dozen, give it a try. “We had our largest bluefin one year, casting a stickbait at a flock of what was maybe six or seven tuna chicks,” Crochetiere says. “A 250-pound-class bluefin came out of nowhere and crushed the plug.”

Shearwater birds also can suggest the presence of sand eels. If you see shearwaters circling high above the water, make a stop. They might be seeing something that you can’t, such as big pods of sand eels or even cruising tuna.

While you’ll likely see such life fairly close to shore, inside 20 fathoms, you probably won’t see tuna, at least during the June-to-September period. We really don’t stop on anything inside 20 fathoms, unless we see obvious signs of tuna feeding. Generally, we find the sweet spot in the 30-fathom range.

However, even in that depth range, if the water looks green or dirty, most of the time we just move. You occasionally might find bluefin in less-than-blue water, but rarely yellowfin. Look for sand eels in cobalt-blue offshore water. That doesn’t guarantee tuna, but work the area. Nearby tuna eventually will find that bait.

Tough Tuna Fishing Gear

We fish these sand eel aggregations with soft-plastic and hard baits, using stout spinning tackle. Our favorite reels include Van Staals , Shimanos, and Daiwas. For a more affordable alternative, try the newest Penn offshore spinners. Reels should be spooled with at least 80-pound braid and 6 to 10 feet of 80- to 125-pound fluorocarbon leader.

Rods must be specific to the tuna-popping-and-jigging game as well. Popping rods measure 7 feet, 6 inches to 8 feet, 4 inches long (casting distance is important), and they should be strong in the butt section for extended fights and real lifting power.

Rods to fish soft-plastic eels can be shorter, at 6 to 7 feet, but they should demonstrate the same parabolic composition. Madd Mantis makes an affordable 7-foot all-around rod.

Summer Bluefin Tuna Fishing

Sand eels usually start to show in the 30-fathom range by mid-June. “It’s generally a water-temperature thing,” says noted New York offshore angler Ray Phelan. “Right around 65 degrees, we start to see them, and they get more abundant as things warm.”

Late spring also marks the appearance of larger (for spin-fishermen) bluefin in the 200-plus-pound category. Moving into July, the bluefin become more manageable in size—in the 80-pound range.

“Yeah, we get a few on poppers and stickbaits,” Crochetiere says, “but during the past couple of years, the shearwaters were so bad that you’d waste valuable time untangling birds. Most of the fish we catch [when that happens] are on RonZ soft-plastic baits.”

The soft-plastic tail wiggles so easily that you won’t have to impart much action to make it resemble a sand eel. Even when working this bait very slowly, it still features a ton of movement. “Tuna will often grab it on the drop,” Crochetiere says. “And we’ve certainly caught fish just dead-sticking them,” or leaving the rod in the holder.

We’ve learned over the years that bluefin like a slow bait presentation. Even with plugs, a long, slow retrieve draws way more strikes than a fast one. Once you get the RonZ below the surface, avoiding a shearwater attack, it works really well. Yes, metal jigs can and do work, but not as well as these 10-inch soft plastics.

When the birds abate, Crochetiere mixes in some poppers and stickbaits such as the Nomad Riptide. This 200 mm (8-inch) translucent floating stickbait features a single strip of reflective tape on its sides, and closely mimics a sand eel. Work this bait in a slow, sweeping fashion. Other effective plugs include the Siren Deep Seductress, Shimano Orca and Daiwa Slider.

“Poppers are pretty awesome too, if for no other reason than the often-violent blowups,” Crochetiere says. His popper choice: the Madd Mantis Atasi. “Not so easy to find anymore, but there’s something about this plug that draws crazy strikes.”

Late-Summer Yellowfin Tuna Fishing

By late July or early August, you might catch a yellowfin while targeting bluefin in that same, general 30-fathom range. And then, in what seems like the span of a few hours, the bluefin can disappear, presumably shooting up to New England and farther north.

“I’m not sure if it’s a ­temperature change, or it’s just that so many yellowfin show up that they push the bluefin out,” Quigley says, noting that the water warms to 74 or 75 degrees in midsummer.

The bait doesn’t change, however; the sand eels continue to swarm. Fishing yellowfin on sand eel aggregations remains similar to targeting bluefin, with a few nuances. Yellowfin seem to swim with the dolphins to a greater extent than the bluefin. A popper placed in front of a school of feeding dolphins often results in an explosive strike from an 80-pound tuna. Cow-nosed rays also dependably indicate nearby yellowfin; the fish often swim directly underneath the rays.

Unique to yellowfin, however, are the skipjack schools. “We have a lot of success throwing big poppers in those skipjack schools,” Quigley says. “The big yellowfin come up from underneath all those skippies and hammer them.”

I don’t think the yellowfin eat the skipjack. Both species seem to feed on the sand eels. Almost every time we clean a yellowfin, we find a stomach packed full of eels, but no skipjack.

Sand eel fishing for tuna winds down in September mainly because the weather worsens and the water cools. Yellowfin, in particular, begin to migrate to deeper water. The eels do remain, and anglers can fish another brief run of bluefin in December as the tuna head back south. During that time, fishing occurs in much shallower water closer to shore.

For summer tuna, remember that farther might not always be better. Think twice about running long, or at least keep your eyes open on the way to the deep. Find the life, and you might score big without burning all that fuel.

The post Catch Tuna Near Sand Eels appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Do you have a photograph of a fish you can’t identify? If so, we’re up for the challenge, and would welcome the opportunity to share your photo and its ID with an international audience of enthusiasts. (Whether published or not, we will personally respond to every inquiry.) Email your jpgs, as large/hi-res as possible, to: fishfacts@sportfishingmag.com.

Some Fish Facts fans have been wondering about the difference between a “standard” yellowfin tuna and an Allison tuna. References to both names are commonplace. For example, Tom Pytel writes, “I often notice in photos some yellowfin tuna with very long anal fins. I’ve caught yellowfin to 100-plus pounds, but none has had those long fins. Is this strictly associated with size or perhaps sex, or some other factor?”

So Fish Facts thought it should, once and for all, clarify this tuna teaser. To cut to the chase, there is no difference: We’re talking about one species, Thunnus albacares.

But indeed, some yellowfin have clearly elongate second dorsal and anal fins. It’s the only species of tuna that exhibits this variation in fin length, says John Graves. Graves, for years chair of fisheries science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, is one of the world’s leading tuna and billfish experts. He notes that the longer fins occur in only larger yellowfin. “In the extreme, the length of these fins can be greater than 40 percent of the total length of the fish. Some refer to these Allison tuna.”

Graves says this occurs independent of the fishes’ sex, but not of the location. “There’s a lot of geographic variation in the length of these fish.” For example, he says, across the Pacific, the relative lengths of yellowfin second dorsal and anal fins tends to increase from east to west.

In scientific terms, this variation in fin size for years “created havoc with the taxonomy of yellowfin tuna,” he says. As many as seven species of yellowfin tuna have been recognized, based on fin size. “It was only in the mid 1960s that the various geographic populations were combined into a single, circumglobal species.”

So while some anglers will remain convinced they’ve caught an Allison tuna, Fish Facts fans will know the truth: It’s a yellowfin tuna, no matter the length of its fins.

The post Fish Facts: What is an Allison Tuna? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

In south Texas’ glassy inshore waters, Capt. Brian Barrera of South Padre Island targets redfish, seatrout and even snook using jig heads and soft baits on light leaders. He catches spooky fish in the clear waters — but to do so, he has to ­downsize his tackle.

“Sight-fishing in 8 inches of water, I have to drop down from 20- to 10-pound braid to make longer casts,” says Barrera. “Jig heads must be ⅛ to 1⁄16 ounces. Four- to 6-inch finger mullet require smaller hooks, too. Don’t use a swivel to connect braid to leader; instead use a line-to-leader knot.”

Because fish are often on edge in his local waters, Barrera prefers to fish greener, off-color waters around his local sand flats. He’s also meticulous about not crowding the fish he’s targeting. “I really try to limit boat noise,” he points out. “You want your casts to be as long as possible to reach undisturbed fish.”

For Barrera, a switch to lighter tackle is a vital strategy for increased hookups. Other top captains along coastal shores employ similar tactics. Consider the scenarios below, each one describing a dramatically different fishery. The captains I interviewed all trim down their tackle differently for success. Chances are you can utilize some of the same techniques the next time you downsize.

Late-Season Tuna Fishing

Albacore are sized favorably to ­succumb to light tackle in the Pacific Northwest. “During the early season on the West Coast [starting in mid-June], albacore tuna tend to be very naive and susceptible to fast-trolled ­surface lures,” says Capt. Mark Coleman, of All Rivers & Saltwater Charters in Westport, Washington.

For anglers, it’s easy fishing for the tasty tuna just two hours off the Washington coast. But as the season progresses, these fish move off the troll gear and prefer live baits on a dead-boat drift. Most of the anchovies used as bait are small in stature, measuring just 4 to 6 inches.

“I have found that by downsizing our trolling lures and cutting our trolling speed in half, we can bring back the excellent trolling action we experience in the early season,” says Coleman.

But why troll when the action’s wide-open on live bait? Well, many times, longfins aren’t feeding at the surface, and that makes them hard to find. “Along with a few other indicators, trolling hookups help us locate the fish,” he explains. “Downsizing your leader from 30- to 20-pound and decreasing your hook size from a No. 1 to 4 make a big difference.”

Fishing Docklights at Night

In South Florida, nighttime anglers in skiffs position down-current of docks outfitted with LEDs. The tiny shrimp, baitfish and plankton clouds attracted to the halos of light tempt game fish such as snook, speckled seatrout and redfish. Because the baits are so small, lobbing a big plug or live bait up-current near the dock is an awful strategy. Often the water is clear, too, so casting bait or lures too large, or getting a boat too close to the structure, spooks that prize ­swimming along the shadow line.

Fly-anglers favor casting baitfish imitators, such as white Clouser flies on 6- and 8-weight outfits. Personally, I remember many nights fishing with friends and doing pretty well on spin tackle; still, nearby boats ­casting fly tackle ate our lunch. The only instances we could match fly tackle fish-for-fish occurred when snook targeted our D.O.A, Z-Man or Gulp! shrimp tied to 20-pound fluorocarbon leader.

Bait size matters at night for ­stripers, too.

“We call it fire in the water,” says Capt. Jay Cianciolo, of Laura-Jay Sportfishing Charters in Sandwich, Massachusetts. When there’s lots of phosphorus and other nutrients in the water, increased numbers of dinoflagellates turn on the light show of bioluminescence to evade predators.

“That’s when I drop down to small ‘pencil’ eels,” he says. “Big eels leave trails in the water, which I believe might push stripers off the feed. [In these circumstances] small eels always get bit better.”

Spinning Tackle for the Win

Cobia are great light-line adversaries, and not enough anglers take advantage of the unique species on scaled-back tackle. The visual fishery across southeastern and mid-Atlantic waters makes a ling’s aggressive bite and fight all the more exciting to light-tackle anglers.

“I know many captains who use ­levelwinds like Shimano TLDs, Avets, Accurates and many others,” says Capt. Brandon Long, of Long Overdue Charters in Charleston, South Carolina. “But over the past couple of years I’ve gone lighter and started having much more fun with cobia.”

Long fishes the brown bombers ­using 4,000- to 6,000-size spinning reels paired with medium-light rods. You don’t want the 4,000 in your hand when an 80-pounder pops up boatside, but for fish in the 15- to 50-pound class, it’s ideal.

“Lighter tackle makes it much easier to cast, present to and feed these fish with smaller plastics and hard baits,” says Long. “I fish 4- to 9-inch Z-Man Jerk ShadZ, smaller subsurface hard baits, and ½- to 3-ounce bucktails rigged with trailers.”

When Long downsizes his reels, he upgrades his drag washers. He also spools his reels with 20- to 30-pound braided line to guarantee sufficient line capacity, terminating with 50- or 60-pound mono leader.

“Felt drag washers will get ­destroyed by fish if not greased properly,” Long points out. “To avoid this issue, I replace all my drag washers with carbon washers from companies such as Carbontex; the strength and heat diffusion these washers handle produce much smoother fights.”

Fish the Docks During the Day

Targeting tarpon and snook in the Brownsville ship channel and basin, Capt. Brian Barrera focuses on the deep sections of channel, along dock structure, and on freshwater runoff channels called resacas. Instead of trolling heavy gear around the jetties (a preferred tactic in the area), Barrera uses home-crafted soft baits to cast deep into the legs of docks.

The bait consists of a ⅛-ounce Tungsten bullet weight atop a 2/0 to 5/0 octopus 4x circle hook. A jerkbait holds to the circle hook with a screw lock or hitchhiker.

“Those tarpon come out from the docks in the morning, but go back into the pilings when the sun’s up,” says Barrera. “I cast far back under the docks and use 20- to 30-pound fluoro leader to get them to bite during the day.”

Play the Odds

Capt. Jay Cianciolo can’t help but gamble. Live-baiting for trophy bluefin tuna far off the coast, he sometimes marks fish on the sounder when he can’t buy a bite.

“That’s when I’ll gamble,” says Cianciolo. “I’ll drop down to 130 fluorocarbon leader and an 8/0 circle hook.” That might not seem like light tackle, but large bluefins often necessitate 11/0 hooks and 180-plus-pound leader. “Usually, I’ll start getting bites then,” he says, “even though I definitely don’t land them all.”

The gambit is worthwhile for Cianciolo, especially when line-shy fish require lighter leaders. You don’t have to take the same risks with light tackle, and plenty of opportunities are available for anglers to downsize their gear and still maintain high landing percentages. So whether fishing inshore, nearshore or far offshore, consider dropping some of that tackle weight — it might just turn into your most productive trip of the season.

The post When to Downsize Your Tackle appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Many years ago, Kona skipper George Parker made ­headlines around the world when he caught the first certified, world-record grander Pacific blue marlin. Since that 1,002-pound giant in November 1954, Hawaii’s lee eddies have churned up a stream of 1,000-pound blues that continues today. Kona waters usually average two or three granders per year, along with more Pacific blue marlin IGFA records than any other sport-fishing hot spot. That parade of records continues. In March 2013, Alex Nuttall boated a 958-pound blue marlin with Capt. Chip Van Mols on the Kona charter boat Monkey Biz II to claim the IGFA women’s 130-pound-class record.

Kona’s consistent billfish success sparked a worldwide revolution in big-game fishing because these big fish were caught on lures pioneered and developed in Hawaii waters. Meanwhile, big-game fishermen elsewhere had been saying you could catch billfish only with bait. Even those doubters caught the Kona wave and started catching marlin on Kona-style lures. Kona is also the perfect starting point for novices who have never caught a fish in their lives. It happens every day, 365 days a year. Newcomers are well served by a well-maintained fleet of top-of-the-line boats and expert captains.

Plus, Kona’s big fish hunt in deep, calm waters near shore. The 100-fathom line is a 10-minute run from Kona’s two main fishing fleets at Honokohau Harbor and Keauhou Bay. What’s more, the biggest fish of any week is usually a marlin in the 500- to 900-pound range caught by a complete newcomer on a four- or six-hour trip. On any day of the year, a visitor can find a suitable charter and hope to catch one or more of Hawaii’s mighty four: billfish, ahi (yellowfin tuna), mahimahi (dolphinfish) and ono (wahoo).

Billfish of Every Kind

Blue marlin, black marlin, striped marlin, sailfish, shortbill spearfish and broadbill swordfish — Kona’s waters are home to every billfish found in the Pacific. But each has a different story, and you should know those stories when you make plans.

Big blues are the billfish that pay the bills in Kona. Blues of all sizes are here year-round, but they are usually most common during the summer tournament season, from June through early September. Mid-Pacific currents can supply a fresh run at any time, however. For example, sometimes April surprises offshore trollers with fish heavier than 500 pounds on every day of the lunar cycle. Catches like these show that the lunar cycle has little, if any, influence on billfishing in Kona (unlike the effect different phases might have in other fishing areas).

Kona granders have also been landed in January, March and July. March, which might otherwise be considered the offseason elsewhere, has turned up more of Kona’s historic granders than any other month, and that includes the 1,649-pound Kona all-time record in 1984. The 1,376‑pound IGFA record for 130-pound class was caught in May 1982. Indeed, granders have been caught in Kona waters every month of the year. Licensed commercial fishermen are allowed to sell blue marlin in Hawaii, but professional skippers prefer tag-and-release for clients who want to let vital fish go. In any given week, more of Kona’s blues are tagged than kept. Visitors should make their wishes known when setting up a charter.

Hawaii’s Striped Marlin

Striped marlin cruise through Kona water’s year-round, but the big run extends from December through March. The Hawaii state record, 212 pounds, turned up here at the end of March 2011. That’s big for a north Pacific stripe, which is noteworthy because South Pacific stripers max out at more than double the weight of their northern cousins. Striped marlin are most attracted to Kona when winter waters cool down into the mid-70s. During those “chilly” times, the luckiest trollers might get up to a dozen striped marlin bites, and hook about a third of them.

Those same striped marlin ­conditions also attract shortbill spearfish of world-record size. Kona’s frisky shortbills ­presently hold 16 IGFA marks for tackle as light as 4-pound-class, and even on fly gear. Record-seekers troll hookless teasers to draw a spearfish within range, and then present a lure, fly or bait on the most sporting gear available. For most visitors, however, the spearfish is a surprise catch when trolling for blues and stripes.

For black marlin, Kona is outside the normal migration range. The entire Kona fleet sees only a handful each year, and these are much smaller than the giants of the Great Barrier Reef far to the south. Old-timers will remind you that the state record weighed 1,205 pounds, but that once-in-a-generation fish was caught in 1980.

Broadbills are the secret sensations for fishermen who know when, where and how to catch them. Most of Kona’s rod-and-reel swordies are caught at night during ika-shibi (traditional hand line) trips that target tuna. With its giant staring eyes, the broadbill is readily attracted to lights at night and to the squid schools that gather in the glow. The state record 503-pounder took the bait in June 2006 at the start of what are usually the three best swordfish months. Only a few boats cater to the night-fishing trade.

Hawaii Tuna Fuel Jet Revolution

More than fifty years ago, Hawaii troller Henry Nishikawa ignited the jet revolution when he caught a world-record ahi on a metal-headed lure drilled through and through with holes. His 269-pound yellowfin didn’t last long in the record books after anglers in the eastern Pacific discovered a tribe of bigger tuna off Mexico. Yet the IGFA record book is still overwhelmingly Kona on the ladies’ side: Kona catches made by women hold the 16-, 20-, 30- and 50-pound-class marks.

Though Kona waters attract ­resident schools of yellowfin year‑round, ahi are most abundant in late spring and throughout summer. As schools migrate west to east through the islands, the big runs reach Kauai first by Mother’s Day in May and Kona by Father’s Day in June. When the action is wide open, lucky boats can catch as many as 10 a day, all in the 100- to 220-pound range, by trolling or live-baiting with aku (skipjack tuna) or opelu (mackerel scad). During the rest of the year, ahi specialists target them with green-stick gear, and continue to catch a few each trip.

Hawaii’s state record ahi (a July catch) of 325 pounds is unusually large for central Pacific yellowfin tuna. Kona’s biggest ahi each year normally hits 250 pounds (258.5 in 2013). The state record bigeye (277 pounds in July 2013) and the biggest albacore (89.2 pounds in April 2011) both were caught on the Big Island’s windward (eastern) coast. The albacore weighed more than any on the IGFA record list but did not qualify for world-record status because it was caught on commercial-fishing gear. Kona ­fishermen regularly catch albies (tombo ahi) in the 60s and 70s on sport fishing tackle.

Mahimahi, Hawaii’s Gift to the World

Almost 70 years ago, Hawaii Big Game Fishing Club official George Perry set the 130-pound-class IGFA world record for dolphinfish with a 72.5‑pounder. That record didn’t last long, but the name “mahimahi” is Hawaii’s gift to the world, because it replaces the confusing name “dolphin” on restaurant menus. Though Hawaii has no current IGFA mahimahi records, the state-record 82-pounder confirms the potential. That record fish was a September Kona catch, but mahimahi are available any time the current drags a “floater” within trolling distance.

Mahimahi live up to their name (it means “very strong”), and the brightly colored, agile acrobats do their muscular tricks in Kona waters year-round. Occasionally huge schools gather around flotsam and jetsam for a wide-open bite that can go on for days. Then, skippers gear down to match the catch with sporting 20- and 30-pound-class rods. Unless a Kona skipper finds a floater, mahi are incidental catches on marlin and tuna trips.

By the way, the mahimahi record aside, Perry went on to catch the largest blue marlin in each of the first two Hawaiian International Billfish Tournaments (HIBT). The HIBT became an annual Kona fishing feature in 1959 and soon inspired dozens of other Kona tournaments. During the most popular tournament months of June, July and August, events compete with each other every week

Ono Blitzes, Summer Phenomenon

A Guide to Big Fish off the Big Island

Ninety years ago, a mysterious fellow known only as “J.B. Stickney” caught a 124.75-pound wahoo in Hawaii waters to set the world record. That was five years before the IGFA was founded, a time when records were compiled by Van Campen Heilner of Field & Stream and Francesca R. La Monte of the American Museum of Natural history. Ono — what wahoo are called in Hawaii — average 30 to 40 pounds, which makes J.B.’s catch even more extraordinary.

Big ones do show up now and then — state-record-holders Tom Brandt and Sky Mullins surprised their 133.2‑pound ono off the windward coast of the Big Island in December 2000. The major ono run reaches the Big Island in May of each year and hangs around into early September. Some ono are caught year-round, with early morning being your best chance. Kona skippers typically troll the 40-fathom line at the start of each trip to pick up any ono that might be harassing the nearshore bait schools.

To ward off the ono’s sharp teeth, skippers rig their special ono lures with single-strand stainless leaders. Ono slash at heavy-headed subsurface lures like weighted jets and lead-head feathers. On a typical trip specifically for ono, a successful boat might catch three or four fish. In years when ono blitz the summer currents, boats are known to hook as many as 40 on a single trip.

Other fishing areas might see the diversity of big-game fish that Kona has, but few have them in the sizes regularly seen here. In Kona, your next strike could come on any day of the year, in any phase of the moon, at any turn of the tide, on routinely comfortable seas, and be one of the Pacific’s biggest and most exciting game fish.

Shore Fishing off the Big Island

The post Kona Hawaii Offshore Fishing appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Yellowfin tuna attack in packs, like wolves descending on a flock of lambs. Often, these 50-pound footballs launch completely out of the water to crash bait from above.

On the hook, they fight like bulldogs with a headstrong run capable of pegging anglers to their limits. On the table, the meat tastes delicate, whether seared like a steak or sliced up cold and raw.

Among the top locations to catch this most-popular gamefish has to be Hatteras Island, North Carolina. Captains troll ballyhoo, cast topwater plugs, dangle baits from a kite or jig vertically. Fishing out of the famed Oregon Inlet, on the east side of Hatteras island, or the fabled Hatteras Inlet on the south side of the island, anglers find ample opportunities to catch the yellowfin tuna of a lifetime.

On the Line in Oregon Inlet

The combination of warm-water eddies and deep structure attracts tuna to the waters off Oregon Inlet from October through June. While blackfin, bigeye and bluefin tuna visit the area, yellowfin tuna remain the star attraction.

The charter fleet fishing out of Oregon Inlet developed the tactics that anglers all over the world use to score yellowfin. Based out of Oregon Inlet Fishing Center, Capt. Charles Haywood chases tuna on his 55-foot custom boat, Rigged Up.

Haywood has fished Oregon Inlet since childhood, starting as a mate for some of the most iconic anglers on the water and later becoming the owner operator of his own boat. After decades chasing yellowfin, Haywood and the rest of the tuna fleet have developed foolproof tuna tactics.

“We can catch yellowfin tuna all winter,” Haywood says. Later, the spring season heats up from early May to late June. While every angler prays for calm weather, Haywood says the best tuna days are a little rough. “Not hell-bent, but a 12- to 18-knot wind seems to get the fish moving,” he says. On a stiff northeast swell, he spots schools of yellowfin swimming downsea.

Getting to The Point

Haywood looks for yellowfin where the edge of the Gulf Stream crosses the continental shelf, anywhere from 30 to 50 miles offshore. Ground zero is a cut in the shelf called The Point. The warmer, clearer water of the Gulf Stream meets the cooler, dirtier water of the Labrador Current in a noticeable seam. As the currents ebb and flow, the seam moves north and south along the edge of the shelf. When the warm water crosses over a hill, cliff or canyon in the edge of the abyss, yellowfin tuna stage to feed.

“This time of year, yellowfin will hold inside or outside the stream,” he says. Haywood has caught yellowfin in water from 68 to 78 degrees; he says 70 to 74 degrees is ideal.

Haywood relies on his fish finder to mark tuna and bait as the boat moves from one piece of structure to another. Once he finds fish on a hill or canyon, he works the area until he dials in specific locations and determines the best direction to approach them.

The Perfect Spread

To catch yellowfin, Haywood trolls skirted ballyhoo at 6.5 to 7.2 knots. He starts with a large ballyhoo rigged beneath a Sea Witch skirt. Haywood keeps a complete palette of skirt colors, from black-and-red to bright pinks and whites. He changes colors to meet weather and water conditions.

He pulls the ballyhoo using 50-pound-class tackle and spools up with 130-pound braided backing. To the backing, he adds a 100-yard topshot of 80-pound mono and crimps a 25-foot leader of 180-pound fluorocarbon between the topshot and the lure.

An effective tuna spread consists of a dozen baits fished from a web of lines. Haywood makes use of long riggers to long-short riggers, short-short riggers, two or three shotguns and flat lines splashing just a few feet from the transom.

Haywood recommends changing each lure’s position until it swims correctly: riding down the boat wake and popping out of the water every minute. Sometimes the fish favor long baits swimming deeper and other times, the tuna attack short baits splashing on the surface. With the right spread, a pack of yellowfin will attack every bait until every rod bends double.

After the first bite, Haywood keeps trolling, hoping to hook multiple fish. By the time he slows the boat to let the anglers work on the fish, he has moved away from the structure. With the swift Gulf Stream sweeping him away from the honey hole, Haywood turns his boat into the current while the anglers fight their fish.

When the spring bite turns hot, anglers descend from every direction to get in on the action. Chartering a professional captain can help you learn the ropes.

Haywood also encourages visitors to network with local captains to monitor weather conditions and navigation hazards. The channel markers don’t mark the channel, and a big winter swell can make the outer bar almost impassable. “We may be tough on the outboarders,” he laughs, “but the inlet is always changing. Don’t be afraid to ask for local knowledge.”

Chasing Action in Hatteras Inlet

Although it lies only 60 miles south of Oregon Inlet, Hatteras Inlet is a world away. While the fleet fishing out of Oregon Inlet enjoys steady action on yellowfin tuna, anglers fishing out of Hatteras Inlet chase tuna that ride eddies of cooler water spinning along the Gulf Stream.

Capt. Rom Whitaker has chased yellowfin out of Hatteras Inlet for 40 years. “Ten years ago, tuna fishing was excellent,” he recalls. Then, local anglers suffered a dry spell — until last year.

Whitaker says the behavior of the Gulf Stream eddies changed. “We had less current and more eddies,” he says — perfect conditions for yellowfin tuna.

The Gulf Stream current can rush faster than 5 knots up the coast, and that deep, blue water is too warm and turbulent for tuna. Instead, Whitaker looks for an eddy of cooler, slower, green water spinning up from the south.

“The water in the eddy can be 3 degrees cooler,” he says. “As the eddy moves up the coast, the current will change from southwest to nothing to a backing tide out of the northeast.”

For this reason, Whitaker starts each day studying satellite sea-surface-temperature images. While on the water, he monitors changes in the eddy with his Sirius XM satellite service. He also talks to captains who fish out of Morehead City to the south, asking about water temperature, current and other details for clues to where the tuna are holding—on the edge, in the center, or at the top or bottom.

Once he determines the most likely area, he looks for where the water crosses underwater structure. “The tuna ride the eddy like a train,” he says. The fish might stop at canyons and rock piles, but they continue to move with the water. “One day they might be south at the 800 line, then the next day they’ll be at the triple zeros, and the third day, they’ll stop behind the Rockpile,” he says, referring to Loran-C locations.

Shifting Tactics With the Seasons

Whitaker says the Hatteras yellowfin season runs from April until early July. As the months progress, his tactics change. He prefers trolling Sea Witches and ballyhoo. If that doesn’t work, he might try dropping a spoon on a planer, or adding a spreader bar into the mix. “I like the spreader bar in the middle of the spread,” he says.

If Whitaker marks fish on his fish finder, but can’t get a bite, he drops 200-gram vertical jigs. If he sees yellowfin jumping out of the water, he grabs a spinning rod rigged with a topwater popper. But his favorite way to catch tuna is with the kite, he says.

When the tuna feed on flying fish, they turn up their noses at trolled baits. Dangling a rubber flying fish from a kite can be just the thing to entice the tuna to bite. Whitaker uses 30-pound tackle spooled with 65-pound braided line. He attaches the mainline to a 4-foot section of 200-pound monofilament holding the lure. He can run two lures off one kite, trolling fast enough to keep the kite in the air and the lures bouncing off the wave tops.

Read Next: More Yellowfin Tuna Tips

“It’s a very visual bite,” he says, describing how tuna launch into the air to snare a flying bait. Yellowfin seem to prefer their prey hanging three feet off the surface. With a lot of line in the air, it’s important to quickly retrieve slack. Sharp hooks snare the fish until the angler can catch up using the reel.

On a typical day tuna fishing, anglers might have to employ several tactics before hitting the mark. Expect to switch from trolling ballyhoo, to casting plugs, jigging metal and flying a kite. But if you can find the right water over the right structure, you’ll find some of the world’s best yellowfin tuna fishing.

FAQ

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When it comes to fishing, Ocean City has a long history, recreationally as well as commercially. Until 1933, the town lacked an inlet. When boats returned to land, full of fish, teams of horses dragged the vessels up the beach. But that changed in 1933 when a powerful unnamed hurricane ripped open what is now the Ocean City Inlet. Suddenly safe, navigable access connected the back bays to the Atlantic.
    
Fishermen took full advantage in ensuing years, and one day in 1939, 171 white marlin were boated out of Ocean City. The label of “white marlin capital of the world” followed shortly after.

Maryland’s main beach-resort community (population just under 7,000) is a nine-mile strip — between Isle of Wight and Assawoman bays and the Atlantic Ocean — that runs from the inlet at the south end north to the Delaware state line.

With so much water, inshore and offshore, the level of interest and effort here in fishing shouldn’t surprise. For one thing, Ocean City is a great jumping-off place to head out to the productive canyons and fish for offshore pelagics such as white marlin, blue marlin, swordfish and tunas — yellowfin, bigeye, bluefin and at times, albacore — as well as wahoo and mahi. 

But simply running out to the canyons and the continental shelf (figure 60 miles to start but at times well past 100) isn’t a guarantee of fast fishing, says Josh Lowery, a captain on the 58 B&B Reel Current. He says the warm-water eddies that spin off — or at times don’t — from the Gulf Stream are critical magnets for bluewater big game. Lowery acknowledges that the 2023 season was a bit lackluster, noting that the ocean off Ocean City didn’t get many good pushes of eddies. But there’s no reason to believe that 2024 won’t be a standout year for eddies again concentrating bait and fish in these waters.

Despite the enduring passion among local-based private yachts and charters for billfish, in recent years, tuna have often taken center stage, Lowery says. Bluefin tuna can be thick at times, though as the season progresses, quotas may limit the fishery. Yellowfin and bigeye frequent the canyons from some time in May into October, Lowery says. Some years, longfin tuna (true albacore) might turn up in the mix, and, closer to shore, expect blackfin tuna.

Though far fewer anglers target swordfish than they do tuna, the action for broadbill can be good from June through early fall, but some years even into December. Most who do seek swords drop deep by day, but Lowery says nighttime drifting can be quite effective.

But Ocean City offers more than bluewater. Less glamorous but much more accessible and easy — and many would argue, no less fun — is the inshore fishing, from just off the beaches to the jetties to the acres of protected back bays. The list of species that inshore anglers catch here is considerable and includes flounder, rockfish (striped bass), tautog, sea bass, red drum, black drum, weakfish, speckled trout, croaker and sheepshead. At times snapper bluefish and Spanish mackerel can be numerous — 2023 proved a better-than-average year, Lowery says. 

While things definitely slow down in the cold-weather months and pick up in the spring for most of these species, tautog and rockfish can be found through the winter. Larger stripers can be found in late spring, when they migrate out of the Chesapeake and head north, then again in the reverse pattern during the fall. 

Tournaments figure large in the fishing picture here. Among the long-running events: the OCMC Labor Day White Marlin Tournament (66th annual coming up in 2024), OCMC Small Boat Tournament (45th annual coming up), Ocean City Marlin Club Canyon Kick-Off (42nd annual coming up), Ocean City Tuna Tournament (37th annual coming up July 12-14), and the White Marlin Open (51st annual coming up August 5-9). At the Open — one of the world’s largest tourneys — 400 boats participated in 2023 with 605 billfish caught and an impressive 602 of those released. Highest single-boat winning total topped $6 million.

Planning a Trip

What to Expect

Anglers will find plenty of infrastructure to serve them. Private boaters are facilitated by full-service marinas, such as the Ocean City Fishing Center and Sunset Marina, where they can launch, moor, and buy bait and supplies. Offshore charters abound and many center consoles offer guided fishing inshore and nearshore. Also popular here are headboats (party boats) that take open groups on large boats to queue up along the rail and drift for flounder, sea bass and pretty much anything the natural baits attract. While largely populated by tourists and casual anglers, these boats do offer a few hours of easy and fun fishing (particularly for families) at an affordable price. Even more affordable and surprisingly productive is fishing the jetties, bridges, piers and surf. 

Helpful Links

For more general information about Ocean City and planning a visit here, visit ococean.com. Also check visitmaryland.org for more information. All fishing regulations can be found at dnr.maryland.gov.

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You might catch a giant bluefin tuna in many locations, as disparate as the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana or the coast of Ireland. But no single area in the world concentrates huge bluefin like Nova Scotia (NS) and Prince Edward Island (PEI) in Canada’s Maritimes. Here, the cold waters of the northwest Atlantic attract great schools of forage, including the herring and mackerel on which tuna feast and fatten. Those same chilly waters discourage smaller bluefin, which have to work hard to stay warm. Bluefin are among the few fishes that can heat their bodies for more efficient predation. The giants’ larger body mass makes it easier for them to remain and feast in the cold, food-rich waters of the Maritimes.

A glance at the IGFA record book tells the story: Of the eight line-class world-record bluefin tuna weighing more than 600 pounds, six were caught off NS or PEI. That includes the remarkable 1,496-pound all-tackle world record bluefin that Ken Fraser caught in 1979.

While that record has remained intact for well over four decades, many bluefins approaching that size have been caught. “Our largest Nova Scotia giant bluefin tuna was caught by Graeme Weiss, of San Diego, in 2013,” says Capt. Josh Temple, who has guided anglers to NS giants for 14 consecutive seasons. “We estimated it at 1,400 pounds, and we have encountered larger fish than that one, which earned their freedom during the fight.”

Temple says there’s no doubt fish even larger than 1,496 pounds are swimming in NS waters, noting that Ken Fraser, who caught the world record and is a friend of Temple’s, “will be the first to tell you he’s seen them bigger.”

Temple cites the first day of his first season in NS 14 years ago, as the day that hooked him. After catching and releasing several giants (he says by NS standards, a giant is at least 700 pounds), “we spent the rest of the day hand-feeding bait to hundreds of giant bluefin. All of this in water less than 60 feet deep and less than 500 yards off the shore, within sight of my pickup, parked at the wharf.”

The focus on NS and PEI by enthusiasts around the world hasn’t ruined the fishery. On the contrary, says Temple, “Thanks to exceptionally well-developed and implemented management frameworks internationally and nationally, giant bluefin populations across the Atlantic have rebounded significantly” and nowhere have the benefits of that been more consistent than around NS. The fact that, “Ninety percent of the giant tuna caught by rod-and-reel in NS are released is a statistic that has surely contributed to the health and sustainability of their numbers in these waters,” he says.

Planning a Trip

When to Go: The giant season in Nova Scotia starts at some point in July and runs into October. Last-minute bookings with top charters are unlikely; best to book the winter prior to your intended trip. If you want the entire tuna trip planned and organized for you, consider signing up for the Sport Fishing Expedition in Nova Scotia.

Where to Go and How to Get There: While you’ll find some charters based in various ports in the province, Ballantyne’s Cove on the Northumberland Shore of Cape George, near the town of Antigonish on the northern end of the island, hosts a concentration of operations. You can drive here — as a reference, plan on 1,000 miles from New York or a bit less than half of that from Bangor, Maine. Those flying in will generally book to Halifax’s Stanfield International Airport. Some operators will arrange transportation from Stanfield to the harbor, or visitors can rent a car.

What to Expect: A number of charters operate from Nova Scotia ports, typically in downeast-style boats designed for fishing in these waters. Typically, they supply the heavy tackle needed to battle big bluefin from a fighting chair. This is catch-and-release fishing, so don’t plan on filling coolers. Figure on $1,700 ($2,300 Canadian), give or take, for a full day of fishing.

What to Bring: Many boats offer stand-up fishing; check with your skipper to see what he offers, and/or about bringing your own stand-up gear. Of course, a good camera and set of foul-weather gear are essential, though summer days are often dry and in the 70s F. By fall, expect 50s and 60s.

Where to Stay: You’ll find a variety of hotels, suites and cabins in the area. Many charter skippers offer or will arrange accommodations for clients.

What Else: As far as fishing goes, Temple says, “For most anglers, NS has a lot of great pelagic fishing left to discover. We’re also catching — seasonally — marlin, yellowfin, bigeye, [true] albacore and even wahoo and dorado along the continental shelf off southwest Nova Scotia, as well as good numbers of giant blue swordfish.”

Besides fishing, the Northumberland Shore is known for having the most “warm-water ocean beaches in Atlantic Canada.” You can explore the works of many skilled artisans here and eat lobster till you burst.

Helpful Links

• Places to go
• Search “bluefin tuna” for several charters
• Northumberland Tourism
• Bluefin Charters
• Tuna Charters Nova Scotia
• Sport Fishing Expeditions

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