How to Catch BLUEFIN Tuna (Recommended Gear)

away from local knowledge here and I want to talk about a subject today that I'm really passionate about and it's our local bluefin fishery now I know a lot of guys have seen these big bluefin you kind of know what's going on but maybe what you don't know is the history behind it we have not had this calibre of bluefin in our local waters for almost a hundred years and because of that so many guys have been caught off guard unprepared light tackle don't know the technique I mean you name it and it's really pretty simple it's a lot like our normal tuna here on the bait fishing side except the gear is just a degree bigger and this would be sort of what we would use in a bigger yellowfin tuna year and it's also a great setup for using for the smaller bluefin that around if I know there's yellowfin around or mix small yellowfin and blue fin this is absolutely my go-to and one of my favorite reels ever the fathom 25 narrow lever drag it's just a great multi-purpose it comes to two-speed or a single speed this is a carnage rod it's a bait rod seven foot rated 30 to 80 pounds I'm gonna spool this up with 65 pound braid typically a leader of 40 pound fluorocarbon as a rule I want my leader to be from about the front of the grip to the tip of the rod and that way when I go to cast the knot is outside of the tip I'm trying to throw a little bait or whatever I get maximum distance out of it and that's really important also using the short Top Shot it allows the fish to drag around spectra line which is much thinner and slips through the water easier as opposed to a heavier diameter mono so I would say that this is a great setup for fish all the way up to 60 maybe 70 75 pounds at the most this is the setup in that case that I'm gonna use for all the bigger tuna it's a fathom 40 narrow lever drag as well I love narrow reels the line just lays down on the spool so much easier it's easier to fish in hand this rod is rated from 80 to 130 it's also seven-foot and I do like that 7-foot rod because it gives me some tips that I can actually toss a sardine with and get it away from my private boat or away from a sport boat I'm spooling this up with 80 pound braid in this case we're using spider wire camo braid and then I'm using a short top shot of 40 pound you can do 50 or 60 if they're really but it's really really hard in a lot of cases to get away with anything more than 40 if they're chewing the pain off put a 80 on why mess around so if you hook a hundred 25 pound fish on this setup you're gonna land them you know with a little bit of luck and hopefully no interference but that to speed once that fish gets straight up and down let him make his initial runs you know with the reel in high speed cuz a lot of times they'll kamikaze they'll run off a bunch of line and they'll turn right back around and run out yeah you don't want to be caught in low gear trying to keep up with a tuna doing 40 miles an hour fight that fish in high gear just as long as you can once the fish settles and starts making his circles down low and you got them straight up and down go into low gear even lay the foregrip of the rod on the rail save your energy you're gonna need it for the endgame these are Mustad diamond circle hooks as always you're gonna match the size of your hook to the size of the bait not the size of the fish these are a 5 oh I'm gonna use this hook to fish a really big sardine typically for a San Diego sardine that's about yay big I'm gonna use a 3 Omega 4 oh if I'm on the fence and I've got healthy bait I want to size up a hook I just like the ability of a bigger hook to get that fish in the corner of the mouth now we all know these bluefin are famous for being finicky and sometimes that's just not an option you may have to size down to a number 100 or a toooo hook anything below that I just wouldn't suggest because this hooks so small it's gonna be more heartbreak than happiness if you brought one of these on a boat 15 years ago you were gonna get laughed at I do believe that there is a right tool for the job and in the case of throwing a popper a stick bait or any lure you're gonna impart action to there's no better tool than a spinning rod now that said once you hook that fish your job gets a whole lot harder you just don't have the leverage with the reel being on the underside of the pole and also not being able to lay this thing on the rail are gonna work a little harder to land that fish but the spinning reel is going to allow you to cast that lure further it's gonna allow you to pop that jig better and the line is still gonna lay down on the reel the way it's supposed to we see small tuna yellowfin we're using a 5500 pen slammer 3 these things are the tanks of the spinning reel they're not crazy expensive they're very reasonable for your lighter Papa rod I'd have something around 8 feet maybe eight six you know and and that you're gonna fish 65 pound braid and probably a 60-pound leader because your lure fishing use a heavier leader it doesn't cost you anything for my heavier rod I'm gonna use 80 pound braid and if I'm throwing a big heavy popper like this big Nomad Chuck Norris I'm gonna throw a hundred pound 130 pound leader why not the fish is not coming by to take a look at my leader but right now our fish are eating bait fish that are about this big in our local waters little tiny anchovies you'll see them spraying everywhere when the tuna are boiling this does not look like a 3-inch ancho's so whenever possible we like to try to match the hatch and you walk a fine line between getting a lure that's too small and has hooks that are too small and is rigged too small to handle a big fish but still being small enough to get out there and trick a fish this is a mad scat it's a hundred fifteen millimeters it weighs 42 grams just heavy enough where we can wing it even on the heavy popper setup it's got big single hooks on it which is a big plus when you're talking about bigger fish anytime you can get a single in there it's less likely to tear out or snag the fish you're probably gonna hook them in the mouth and it's got a three wire system that is made to handle a bigger fish another secret while everybody has been fishing poppers that we've been very successful with is throwing stick baits while a popper blows up on the surface and attracts attention these guys kind of snake through the water with a totally different action and a lot of times we'll get a bite because it mimics a bait fish so well when a popper won't this is called a dart wing and I call this more of a skitter lure almost like a bass floor and that it sits on the surface and it just skitters away from them you get this into those big foams and you give it you know a couple of cranks and a little jerk in action and they'll eat it then another thing that we've been doing lately to mimic that small bait fish in a casting situation is we've been using these tiny flat fall style jigs this is a gypsy jig and what this allows you to do I throw this right into the fray I might jig it a couple of times so it looks like a wounded bait fish that they've already smashed you can see this thing's about three inches it pretty closely mimics what they're naturally feeding on is what we would call a traditional vertical jig or a butterfly style jig being with this jig is is you're constantly jigging and winding down like you've probably seen before and you're moving that lure up through the water column up and down very very quickly this will also get bid on the sink just like a flat fall the bluefin are everywhere we saw stuff just this weekend that we haven't seen in the past five years in terms of volume these will definitely get you headed in the right direction if you like these videos please subscribe to our Channel and also in the comments below let us know what else you'd like to see we want to keep content coming your way that's relevant that you look forward to thanks so much for watching 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Channel: Local Knowledge Fishing Show

Views: 142,496

Rating: 4.9298816 out of 5

Keywords: How to catch bluefin, how to catch bluefin tuna, how to catch tuna, bluefin tuna fishing, recommended gear for bluefin, bluefin tuna gear, fishing gear bluefin tuna, bluefin tuna san diego, fishing for bluefin tuna, bluefin bite, bluefin fishing, local knowledge, fishing for bluefin, fishing tips, nomad lures bluefin, bluefin tips, bluefin tuna tips, bluefin tuna, tuna bite, blue fin tuna, san diego bluefin, bloodydecks, trophy tuna, trophy bluefin, wicked tuna 2019

Id: eB0KGWlb_Sg

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019