Bluefin Advice

[flcapt]

You should absolutely be using Floro, Bluefin have the best eye site of any of the other tuna! Also don't use your reg yellowfin colors. Fish everything small 4 to 6" and use all whites, red/white,blue/white, blacks. Stay away from the usual greens and yellows. Also fish closer then you would for yellowfins, many times I would fish in the first wave behind the boat on flat lines. Speed should be between 5 and 7 kts depending on sea conditions-your boat-lure size and type.

[skip_mff]

thanks for your reply flcapt. Don't believe we get Yellowfin in the med, or if we do its very rare. Mostly Bluefin, Albacore, Small Tunny in the Tuna family.

Don't have any all white lures so need to look at that, red/white is usually a very hot colour for us, blue/white not as popular though we have had a couple of hook ups, black never, though will try some more. Dorado colour cedar plug has been very good, and red/white squids with a blue/pink jet head chase bait as well.

Whats the reasoning with the greens and yellows for Bluefin? Those colours seem to do well with Albacore here. Will keep them fairly close, I beleive Bluefin like the noise and foam generated by the props.

What length floro leader is recommended? And are you putting a snap swivel on to the eye or a hard bodied lure or tying direct.

Thanks

[flcapt]

I have no real answer why the yellows and greens dont workas well for bluefins excet after catching hundreds if not over a thousand of them it is just what I have found.

Albies love those colors along with yellowfins and bigeyes but for some reason the bluefins arent that crazy about them.

one of the best lures you can use is a red/white cedar jig flatlined in the first wake. Dont be afraid of the natural colored ones also.

The best thing you can do for the size fish you have is to downsize everything your using. Fish no lures bigger then 6 " and single skirts with small hooks, nothing larger then a 7/0 max.
Also i seldom use single lures, fish three or four in a row (only put the hook in the last lure) or small spreader bars. Also the Bird teasers work VERY good as long as your lure is at least 15 behind it.
If you are still having trouble getting bites fish lighter floro, 40lb is fine. the combination of small hooks and lighter leader will do wonders. You want to make sure your snap swivels are not splashing in front of your lures (not really sure why they would know the differance but it is just what I have found to work)

As with any trolling spread, start out with a varity of shapes and colors and as you get hits start to put mutiples of the ones that work that day.

I have had many days that I have had 6 rods lined up on the first wake and just crushed the tuna!

When you get a bite on say the left short, change the right short to the same lure. if they both get hit now change a lure in a different position and see if that gets bit. If so keep doing it until you get fish on your whole spread. If you dont get the bites in other places start moving your lures to where you are getting the bites, this will also get you way more muti hookups!
Also if one rod gets hit go to the matching rod on the other side and jig it, you will be amazed how many extra fish you will get doing that.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask!

[Boboe]

Originally Posted by chummer

Nick,

This particular lure tracks well at speeds up to 12-14 kts and tends to dive deep. The only downside is that these lures tend to get beat up very quickly and the welded rings holding the hooks will break quite

Braid Speedsters are notorious for this. Yo-Zuri bonita lures are also notorious for having shitty swivels on the hooks. They always break too. When I get a brand new Yo-Zuri lure, I cut off the welded rings and the swivel. I replace them with a split ring, a barrel swivel, another split ring, and then the hook. I've never had that fail.

[chummer]

I'll give that a shot. I just picked up another pair of speedsters and I have my bolt cutters ready to snip off that POS hardware and replace it with something better. At least it's through-wired.

[skip_mff]

Well went out Sunday eve to be close to location for an early start Monday morning. Had some Yozuri 120mm Bonito's in Purple/Black and Orange/Red/White as well as a Williamson squid cut down with a ballyhoo, Various Rapala's in red/white and blue mac.

All rigged with Flouro leaders, changed the hooks out on the Rapala's etc and we headed out. No visual sightings in the morning and no bites even though we knew we were in the correct area. Switched over to fish the local lampuki, small Dorado 2.2lbs on hand lines and caught a few of those. On the way heading in back towards the tuna spot, we pulled up the hand lines and I was just deploying a broken tail, red/white rapala keeping it in the prop wash close to the boat. Lure was in the water for no more than 15 secs, in fact I was still setting the rod in my hand, when we got a hit which surprised the hell out of me.

Pulled in a 15lbs Bluefin and could see all his friends, a shoal of say 20 but we werent prepared with a surface popper or bait to chunk in. We then trolled all around the area with no more hits, varying speeds, lures you name it. When we would stop you could see the bluefin 5 meters underneath, we even chummed as we trolled and had around 30 splashing behind the boat and spread but not attacking. Tried a couple of 8-10 knot runs and nothing.

We even stopped, chummed the area and dropped bait down on a single hook with flouro and nothing either. They were just swimming around winding us up! Wasnt much surface activity and when there was it looked like they were playing rather than feeding.

Reckon my hookup was instict, they were following the prop wash and then one minute you see nothing and then suddenly a bait. But otherwise they didn't want to know.

Bit confused as to what we should have done, if anything! was a nice day out at least.

[flcapt]

Skip,

Well at least you were able to see why I said you dont have to fish far from the boat! That would have been a perfect time to line up all your rods right across the back of the boat with cedar plugs and the rapalas and on the outside rods run some small heavy feathers that you can jig as your trolling. have the people keep the rod tips almost in the water and use long strokes. The fish that were under the boat were obviously not feeding mode but as you said you had to force that natural instinct to bite out of them. That why you need to set up a whole school of easy bait for them and not have just one bait here and another over there as in your normal spread.

Another thing to try when they are just not biting is to go with very light leader and small baits. Because it sounds like most of the fish are small i would have a spread or 2 of small feathers/squid type dasiy chains and or small thin spreader bars made up on 30lb flouro that you can use to really put a easy school of bait behind the boat. Also always have a planner or two with some type of silver spoon like the "clark" spoons. They are deadly for bluefins, I have seen days that that is the only thing that gets hit! Again I think it has just so much action and its the right size that it just makes them eat!
The one thing you have to remember is that sometimes they just dont eat! lol
If you keep finding the fish and just dont ever get the amounts of shots you should be getting I would try fishing earlier or later, bluefin here in the states are famous for being a VERY early and a VERY late bite. Not talking about in the dark they actually rarely seem to eat in the dark like Yellowfins and Bigeyes, but rather from the very first false light of sunrise and into the very last light of sunset.
When I used to fish out of NY in the fall we would fish for all sizes of Bluefins from 15lbs to Giants and every so often the bite was so good in the late day that we would not even start fishing until 3 in the afternoon and the same with the morning, many times the bite would be all but over after 8 am. Usually the hot bite would be done by 7 am actually. If you got there and fished during normal fishing hours you would be just feeding the ocean!

Well I hope some of this helps,
Capt Frank

[skip_mff]

Thanks Frank, certainly learning alot about what to do when you can see the fish and they don't want to know.

Will try and make sure we have the right kit for that kind of spread in the future, though for me the season is drawing to an end in terms of keeping the boat in the water.

The timing could be an issue though strangely we've never had good luck early in the morning or the evening for that matter. Always seems to be after 9am which is weird and then sporadic at best.

Might be an idea, weather permitting for us to get in the area very early in the morning and start chumming the area lightly ready for that very first light you mention.

Dont have any spoons so will look at those. How far behind the planer do you usually run them? And I take it even if they are not biting one keeps the speeds as usual?

Nick