Yellow Fin Tuna Are On! – Issue 5

Before I get started on the Yellow fin – a report just in is that there are huge Southern Blue Fin Tuna being caught off Sydney. Reports of fish up to 150kg have been caught with several around the 100kg mark being caught on deep divers and small skirts. If you are one of the lucky anglers that has landed one of these monsters make sure you send in a picture to us and we will post it on the next issue.

The east coast of NSW in particular is starting fire up with big Yellow Fin Tuna and to follow is a quick run down on some of the lures that will produce excellent results.

Firstly, cubing for big fin is a tried and true method. If you have never done it before it’s really simple and extremely effective. Once you have found the grounds that you wish to fish you simply start your burley trail. We always use pilchards cut into about 5 pieces. We normally start the session with a couple of good hand full of cut up pilchard and then one piece at a time. Once you throw a piece in you wait until it sinks out of sight and then throw in the next piece. By doing this you are creating a long line of burley in the current that hopefully will cross the path of a school of Tuna. Once you have your burley cut and the trail started I normally use half a pilchard and hide a circle hook the best I can in the flesh. Despite the fact that the bait is slightly bigger that your burley chunks doesn’t seem to deter the Tuna. However, I have found that if your circle hook isn’t hidden well enough they sometimes shy away. I have caught allot of Tuna using this method, but I must say if your like me and have a tendency to get sea sick perhaps the boat on the move is better for you.

That leads us to trolling. The more lures in the water the better I say but it will obviously depend on your boat. If you have out riggers try and aim for a spread of six lures. I don’t have them on my boat so we run four lures. The killer lures last season were the 30′ X-Rap in the Dorado colour. Most Tuna fisho’s use them these days in conjunction with skirted lures. The skirts I recommend are the Pakula Hot Heads. I normally run two X-Raps and two Hot Heads at a time. I fish a skirt out wide to the right, a deep diver next in, a skirt in the wash and then another X-Rap out to the left. The skirt that we run in the wash is literally only 5 to 7 metres from the back of the boat and has accounted for many big fish. There is no right or wrong way to run your lures, you just have to get out there and see what works for you. The speed that you troll at is very important. You need to remember that Tuna are one of the fastest fish species in the ocean. They  can cover a lot of ground really fast so don’t be shy in trolling a little faster. I try and stay around 7-10 knot’s which to some fisho’s is way too fast but we have always caught lots of fish at that speed and can cover more ground in one session.

Reports to date off Sydney are fish to 70kg with many around the 20kg mark. Get out there.

Cheers,

Mark Berg.

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