Tuna
7 Best ways to target Yellowfin Tuna
Fishing from a boat or ski on the East Coast of Africa
YFT! Strong. Fast. Fat! And in shallower, warmer water, they fight real hard.
1. Throwing plug: a big shiny plug, with huge single hooks, a 200lb leader, attached to some 80lb braid, attached to a mean reel, on a mean rod – is the single most effective and best way to target YFTs – by far. You can actually witness the strike in all it’s chaos and glory, right on the surface in front of your eyes. Sometimes the tuna chase right to the boat splashing you as they smash your plug.
Its an erratic, but not a fast retrieve. It takes practise with each plug, to make the biggest splash, the loudest noise, and the most bubbles each time.
2. Chunking: a close second. Using chopped and crushed up bait, like sardines or a bonito, a chum slick is started boatside. And propogated with a few chunks and some juice every two metres. This forms a highway of free bait and smell for fish to follow towards you.
Where you are waiting with a chunk of bait, on a staunch single hook, with some power leader, tied to some 50lb minimum, spooled on a lever drag with drag set at 8kgs, on a short powerful stand up rig.
Spool a few metres free into the water, and let it all go with the chum.
Watch out for overwinds as the tuna, swimming twice their body lengths per second, gulp down your bait and turn to look for the next one. Push the drag up to 8kgs strike. Crank like crazy and when the fish realises it is hooked, hold on really tight.
In amongst all this, anybody throwing a plug over the back of the slick, also better be prepared to hold on.
3. Live bait: slow trolling with a few live mackerel or jube jube bonito puts you in the game for anything. And although tuna don’t like wire on fast trolling lures at all, they will overlook it at lower speeds like when trolling slow with liveys out back.
4. Surface spinning: ok, ok, when the tuna come up and surround a shoal of baitfish, smashing through them like there is no tomorrow, and you get a spoon in amongst that lot, your adrenalin will surge. And surge.
It is important to match your offering to the size and profile of the baitfish. Colour is less important in these wild circumstances. Most times however, when the tuna feed like this, they will take anything.
Included in this section are the buck shots, Ondes, bullet spoons…
5. Deep jigging: what was once just called spooning, as we dropped out spoons to the bottom, on the drift, or slow troll, and retrieved erratically although with some pattern and style, is now deep jigging. And instead of scarborough reels, aka KPs, people now use coffee grinders. Big and powerful ones. With heavy braid and leaders.
This is also well practised in the chum slick. Just be careful not to hook up and tangle the free spooled trap lines!
6. Fast trolling: luckily daisy chains are so effective they also take care of many YFTs. Swimming plugs also catch young tuna in these warmer waters, but the big ones shy away every time. Very seldom do you get a fish over 10 or 12kgs taking a swimming plug in clear water.
7. Konas: but if you really want a big fish, head out deep and drag a spread of heavy konas, as you would for marlin. Maybe a little slower, like 8 knots, or 9. Some swimming plugs work at these speeds just fine, but steer away from the bright coloured versions full of ball bearings and treble hooks. They will chase anything away, sounding worse than two stroke motors underwater. Rather change to single hooks, so that you live bait or release candidate is not annihilated and bleeding to death from wounds sustained from huge treble hooks.
There are other methods too deployed in other waters, but these listed above, will surely get you your prized YFT.
Just remember please, that a yellowfin only attains sexual maturity at about 35 to 40kgs. Releasing these fish healthily is possible with the right tackle. Just pull them! As you have to anyway, to get them away from them sharks at so many places we fish.
If you are going to keep one for sushimi, take a single small guy every now and then.
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