Blue Gold

A magnificent sportfish has saved N.C. coastal jobs during recent winters, but the future for bluefin tuna isn’t rosy.

Five years ago, aboard a now-retired 54-foot Atlantic Beach-based charterboat, the Top Hook, a strapping 6-2, 200-pound angler from Raleigh settled into a stern chair for his first tussle with a tuna. It wasn’t a yellowfin, skipjack or false albie, you understand, but a bluefin, a man’s fish.

But after the angler and tuna (a 298-pounder) went 10 rounds, and the bluefin was gaffed and yanked onto the boat’s deck, Mark Hughes unhooked himself from the fighting chair, leaned across the stern and promptly lost his breakfast.

That’s not a typical response by a recreational angler who has just landed the biggest fish of his life. But it’s a normal reaction after battling a bluefin. Yet that tuna was just a teenager compared to some of the fish N.C. anglers have caught since the early 1990s.

But if the last two years are any indication, bluefin tuna fishing — at least along the N.C./Va. Atlantic coast — is in a down cycle. Some observers theorize the effects of hurricanes during 2004-05 are the cause, changing baitfish patterns and water conditions. Whatever the reason, bluefin catches have declined in recent years.

What will happen this year is anybody’s guess.

Bluefin tunas usually begin to appear off N.C.’s northern coast during late November, moving down the Atlantic Coast. By mid-to-late December they usually show up at the East Side of the Cape Lookout Shoals.

Capt. Thomas Wood of the Dancin’ Outlaw, a 56-foot C&L, built in Virginia and finished out in 2002 by Jim Buxton (founder of Jarrett Bay Boats) in Wilmington, has been greeting angling customers at Morehead City’s Waterfront slip for 14 years. He’s seen good times and bad when it comes to bluefin fishing, but he refuses to bail out for Florida each winter because he hopes to hit the jackpot with a few good bluefin days.

“Last year (2005) we had the biggest (bluefin) tuna landed here,” he said.

Wood has a commercial license to sell bluefins, as well as a recreational charterboat angler’s license.

During December 2005, Wood and his crew of Chris Elliott, a pro bass angler, and now-retired mate Timmy Leroux, hooked up with a bluefin with an estimated live weight of 800 pounds.

“After it was cleaned, it weighed 580 pounds,” Wood said. “It brought $12,000.

“(Bluefin fishing) can be really profitable and probably is the difference in some of us staying in business.”

The $12,000 ($20.60 per pound) for one fish was about the same amount Wood earns for 10 recreational all-day charters. But in 1991 a buyer for a Japanese fish market paid an angler $68,503 ($96.65 per pound) for a 708-pound bluefin tuna.

“We fish for bluefins during December and January,” Wood said. “The best (tuna) fishing seems to be from Dec. 25th on.”

When the commercial bluefin tuna season starts, Wood, like many Crystal Coast skippers, gathers together a couple of mates or friends and heads out of Beaufort Inlet, hoping to catch a big bluefin to sell to a buyer representing Japanese interests.

Rules of the National Marine Fisheries Service recently have allowed commercial-license holders to keep three medium-large or one giant bluefin per trip. But that rule actually only applies to northern (Maine, Mass., N.Y., N.J., Md.) anglers. The allowable “retention limit” reverts to one fish for commercial anglers Nov. 1, 2006, when bluefins normally cruise N.C. waters.

Current National Marine Fisheries Service rules set the recreational limit per boat at two “slot” bluefins (47 to 73 inches) through May 31, 2007, and one “trophy” (greater than 73 inches) fish per year per boat. But the two-fish limit usually drops to one fish when the U.S.’s western Atlantic quota nears its weight cap. And that usually happens during the start of N.C.’s bluefin season — which turns the winter into a gamble for charter captains.

The dilemma for Wood and others is they can choose to accept paying customers (guaranteed $1200 to $1800 per day, less expenses for fuel), allow their anglers to catch tunas they release (or take home for the grill). Or they can ignore the guaranteed charter fee, go fishing as commercial anglers and hope their number comes up on the giant bluefin roulette wheel.

For Wood there’s no question about what he will do.

“We don’t do recreational fishing during the commercial season,” he said. “During the commercial season, you might see 300 boats (in N.C. waters). As soon as that season ends, only about 20 boats will work (recreational charters).”

The kicker is that bluefins are finicky and the weather restricts fishing opportunities. Tunas may show up in great numbers or disappear totally. Last year, for example, southeastern N.C. captains working out of Southport, Lockwood’s Folly Inlet and northern South Carolina ports surprisingly found abundant bluefins cruising their waters while the fish were scarce off the Crystal coast. For the first time, Southport and Palmetto State captains caught, weighed and sold bluefins.

But four of five years ago, boats didn’t have to get out of sight of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse to find lots of bluefins. Surf anglers at Core and Shackleford Banks still tell stories of the big ocean-going marauders chasing schools of trout in the surf.

“We caught them in 20 feet of water then,” Wood said.

The weather restriction is obvious — winter storms keep boats inshore many days when the bluefin quota is still open.

“We went 11 days (in 2003) and caught nine bluefins,” Wood said. “The year before we did about the same.”

Bluefins provided a lot of fun — and extra cash — for N.C. anglers and captains from the mid-1990s to 2004. “Bluefin fever” swept the state, and captains had plenty of eager anglers, ready to pony up for charter trips and a chance to tie into a 300- to 500-pound fish.

“Actually (bluefin) fishing has been pretty constant since 1993,” Wood said, “with last year the first really down year.”

His explanation?

“They’re just like any other fish in the sea — they chase bait; they go after shad.”

By “shad,” Wood meant menhaden or “pogies” as some anglers call these huge baitfish schools.

However, unlike king mackerel anglers who nearly always troll menhaden because kings love to eat them, offshore boats use “horse” ballyhoos, big ones up to a foot long.

“I think it’s maybe the scent (from the ballyhoo) or maybe just the opportunity for a free meal,” Wood said. “Bluefins are pretty lazy eaters.”

But, even though he’s found hard crabs in bluefins’ stomachs after cleaning them, Wood said he hasn’t been tempted to troll a crab with a Sea Witch.

The Dancin’ Outlaw gets a few repeat customers each year who want to catch bluefins, but most of them seem to be from states other than North Carolina.

“We have two groups from Texas every year that come for bluefins,” Wood said. “I think it’s something different for them.

“We also get people from up north. There’s some people from Minnesota who come here every year. The farthest away we’ve had anybody come to fish for bluefins is California.”

But overall, he said, the recreational charter business has “leveled out.”

“Some people come every other year; some come every three years,” he said. “They don’t do it every year like they used to.”

Wood said he finds it difficult to encourage anyone to return a second time after they’ve fought and landed a bluefin.

“How do you get a guy pumped up to come back so he can crank a Volkswagen off the bottom one more time?” he said.

Even though there’s still plenty of opportunities for N.C. recreational anglers to experience bluefin tuna fishing, less pressure on these saltwater giants obviously is needed.

Some captains are reluctant, in the face of declining catches, to encourage recreational anglers because the fight with a bluefin, some believe, builds up lactic acid in the fish’s body tissues. So even released alive, it’s possible bluefins may sink to the bottom and die.

Maybe once should be enough when it comes to catching these increasingly rare saltwater giants.