Secrets of the Tuna King

I’m decidedly a light-tackle guy. Always have been and always will be. I grew up throwing topwater plugs to structure and freaking out every time a largemouth bass blew up on one. Decades later, I discovered that striped bass reacted similarly, though far more violently. Then, as I got older and started my saltwater guiding career in earnest, I realized there was always a lull during the dog days of summer when the stripers just weren’t active, which was no good for a guy like me with zero patience.

In 2005, schoolie bluefin tuna began to invade New Jersey’s Ambrose Light region in August, and we crushed them on topwater stuff. While that run didn’t last long, I had caught the offshore bug, and it wasn’t something that was just going to go away.

A year later, I pretty much broke the bank when I put a deposit down on my first offshore-capable boat. It was a 25-foot Contender with a couple of Yamaha 150s. Unfortunately, I fell into the mindset that if I wanted to catch tuna, I had to troll. After all, that’s just what everyone did back then. I maxed out a credit card with some stupid-heavy trolling setups, spreader bars, daisy chains, Joe Shute rigs and more.

The first time I made it out to the grounds was a disaster—tangles every time I turned around and expletives galore. During one tangle, I noticed that we were getting some pretty good-looking marks on the sounder. I dropped a jig down and promptly got spooled. We did, however, land a few, and even caught a few on topwaters. From there on out, I never used that trolling stuff again.

FEEL THE RUSH

Of course, this is just one man’s opinion, but I’d rather spend the day in a pit full of venomous snakes than troll for tuna. I’m the kind of guy who needs to constantly be engaged, trying to find life and marks. Trolling doesn’t really allow for any of that.

To me, trolling takes away from probably the most awesome part of tuna fishing—feeling the line stop mid-jig and suddenly setting the hook on a monster. Then, that wonderful sound of 80-pound braid dumping from a spool fills the air as I scream, “Get the lines in!” And the topwater stuff? Even better. As soon as you pause that popper—KABOOM! A 200-pound-class tuna absolutely murders the thing in a violent crash of water, sometimes feet from the boat. Often, I can’t even get to the throttles in time to prevent losing a good 400 yards of line to a monster fish. There is nothing even remotely relaxing about any of it. It’s an active hunt, and when you connect, the pure, unadulterated battle that follows, unconstrained by heavy, cumbersome gear and harnesses, is unlike anything else in fishing.

Can you catch more fish trolling? In some cases, absolutely. However, there are times and conditions when you’ll catch more by jigging and popping. Of course, there are folks who bring both types of gear and adjust accordingly, and if your goal is to simply to fill a box with fish, then go with one of those guys. You will never find me trolling. I’m a jig-and-pop adrenaline junky to a fault. That sort of do-or-die approach is sometimes seen as elitist or purist, but that’s the just way I am and the way it is.

GET GEARED UP

While jigging for tuna isn’t new, the gear we use these days is far different than the conventional jigging gear used 20 years ago. It’s all about spinning gear now. Back in the day, you really couldn’t use spin gear because manufacturers just didn’t make reels that could stand up to the pressure of big fish. Today’s offshore reels, like the Daiwa Saltiga and Shimano Stella, are super-resilient and have drags rated north of 60 pounds.

As for rods, Centaur is the leader in short, soft jigging rods in the 5-foot to 5-foot-6-inch range that allow an angler to speed jig (i.e., reel, jig, reel, jig) all day without killing his arm. The best rods are soft in the tip section to give the jig the right action, but with enough backbone to win a fight with a tuna.

Centaur was also the pioneer in making 7-foot-6-inch to 8-foot-4-inch popping rods. Their soft tips can throw 2- to 4-ounce plugs far, yet they have enough muscle to whup a fish weighing more than 200 pounds. That strength in the middle and butt sections of the rod is important because tuna generally go for two or three drag-burning horizontal runs before they dog down vertically. At that point it becomes an exercise in lifting, gaining a foot at a time.

Lastly, braided line allows for more line on the spool and greater breaking strength than traditional mono. I can’t imagine tuna fishing without braid. There are many braid manufacturers, but we’ve always used Cortland. The company’s hollow-core braid is very useful, as you can splice line together without compromising breaking strength. We only use hollow-core on the popping reels, not the jigging ones, because the surface area of hollow core creates too much drag, putting belly in the line.

For the jigging reels, we use Daiwa Saltiga Boat Braid. The 10K- to 14K-class reels get 60-pound-test. For the 18K reels, we spool up with 80-pound, and for the 20Ks we use 100-pound. Usually, we match fluorocarbon leader material of the same weight and use either a PR or slim beauty knot to attach them. At the terminal end, we tie on a 200-pound Spro swivel with a straight-up clinch knot and use a 200-pound split ring to connect to a jig or plug.

ACQUIRE THE TARGET

People make the fish-finding part of the equation more complicated than it needs to be. The first rule of thumb is to find the life.

I generally start by keeping my eyes open once I reach that 20-fathom curve (120 feet). That’s typically the shallowest depth where we find fish. That is not to say you won’t find them in 100 or even 80 feet (bluefins can sometimes be found even shallower), but 120 is the standard.

What do I mean by life? It could be rays or birds like storm petrels (aka tuna chicks), shearwaters, terns and gulls, but most important are the mammals. Whales, particularly fin whales and humpbacks, feed on massive pods of sand eels. When they are around, the odds are good that tuna are there feeding on the same thing. Porpoises are a good indicator, too. We catch a lot of fish by throwing topwater baits at pods of dolphins. Sure, there are different baits offshore, but sand eels seem to drive both the yellowfin and bluefin tuna bite for me. If I can find the sand eels, it’s usually game on.

You’ll also want to find good water, particularly for yellowfins. What I mean is blue, clear water in the 70-degree range. Bluefins are less picky about the water they live in. I’ve caught them in brown water as cold as 46 degrees, but they do seem to like that warm blue water better.

Many anglers search for temperature breaks, but I haven’t found them to be all that productive. Although temperature breaks draw krill and other filter feeders that other fish feed on, tuna are going to go where the bait is. And if it’s well inside or outside of that temp break, that’s where they will be. Understand, too, that your sounder only covers a limited amount of water. Tuna are constantly swimming. Just because you aren’t marking under the boat doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Quite often, both the bait and the predators are on the surface, and your sounder won’t pick that up.

By all means, stay away from the trolling fleet. You’re likely going to have a real hard time throwing topwater baits or dropping jigs down with a bunch of boats trolling spreaders right beside you. And they won’t like you being there either. Finding your own life pays dividends.

LURES OF CHOICE

There are a ton of jig and plug manufacturers, and most tuna-rated stuff will work. I can only tell you what’s worked for me, and what continues to be effective.

I’m a big fan of Nomad Streaker jigs. I use the 80-gram ones as conditions permit, usually on calm days with little drift, but the 120- and 200-gram jigs are the workhorses. In terms of colors, I’m partial to PinkGlo. Really, it’s just a matter of getting one in front of a fish’s face. Sometimes these jigs are hard to find, though, especially in July and August. UVT jigs are a solid second choice.

Working the jigs is pretty straightforward. Drop it to the bottom, then reel, jig, reel, jig without stopping until you get to the boat. If you get a strike, set the hook hard three times—I mean real hard. If you don’t set up on that fish hard three times, it will come loose.

For topwater fishing, there’s one standout popper that I started using a decade ago—the Madd Mantis Cherry Pop. Frostbite was the original color and the one that’s worked best over the years. A lot of people mistakenly work these poppers with a constant, fast retrieve, as if they’re bass fishing. The difference with tuna is that you pull the popper hard, with a swing of the rod tip, and try to make it push as much water as possible. Pause for a second or two, then do it again.

RonZ Lures are another good option. These are nothing more than tuna-rated soft-plastic baits. We sometimes throw them directly at whales, as the tuna seem to frequently be right below the whales, picking up stunned sand eels that the whales couldn’t quite inhale. Working these baits is counterintuitive; super-slow is the drill. Lift the rod tip and let the bait sink. The slower, the better in this case.

We often catch tuna by just dead-sticking these baits, too. That is, we drop them to the bottom, put the rod in the rod holder and let the baits feed out with the drift. There’s enough action in those things at drift to generate strikes.

Catching summertime tuna isn’t really a secret nor especially difficult. Find the life, find the fish and give them what they want. It’s really that simple.

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• This article was featured in the August 2024 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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