Will Bluefins Rebound?

Some observers believe a new year class of tuna portends better angling for the future.

Large bluefin tuna are being depleted, but they’re not being over-fished.

Anglers should take with a grain of salt the wailing and whining of people who make their living wailing and whining.

This year’s commercial and recreational allowances have been expanded by the National Marine Fisheries Service, indicating the stock is healthy enough to withstand the catch. More importantly, a backup stock is on the way.

The most credible complaints have been about the quality of the meat (fat content) and the prices paid, not the numbers of bluefins still swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.

Since Americans prefer eating yellowfin tuna, that’s important to the Japanese market — but not to American recreational fishermen who generally find bluefin tuna strange-tasting. Certainly the big fish are getting bigger and fewer every year, but another large cohort (year class) of bluefin tuna is coming up fast.

Rom Whitaker of the Release at Hatteras said the bluefin tuna season in North Carolina waters usually peaks from mid-January to mid-February, depending upon availability of baitfish.

So January could be a top month but won’t be anything like it was a dozen years ago.

“(Back then) we could expect 20 to 30 fish a day over 100 pounds and sometimes to 300 pounds, then it was Katie-bar-the-door they were so thick,” he said. “Bluefish at the nearshore wrecks probably bring them inshore here.”

Otherwise the tuna follow large schools of menhaden. In more northern waters, bluefins chase herring, but they’ll eat everything and anything, including crabs and dogfish sharks.

Whitaker said N.C. anglers usually find them within 4 or 5 miles of Hatteras Inlet, working on a big body of menhaden, mostly at night or early in the morning. Then they move to deeper water as the sun climbs.

“Mostly our bluefin have been 3 to 10 miles out in high 50s or low 60s (water temperatures) in reasonably clear water, sometimes right outside the Hatteras Inlet buoy and other times as far as the Atlas Tanker north of Cape Lookout,” he said.

Photographs in magazines of anglers battling bluefin tuna with stand-up gear are exciting, but not everyone has the skill to subdue these big fish with that kind of tackle.

“This is mostly sit-down fishing with 50-pound-class gear baited with horse ballyhoo and sea witches fished off down-riggers,” Whitaker said. “We used to chunk them up when they were thicker in years past.”

Similar to other area skippers, Whitaker allows stand-up fishing if the angler is competent and has the proper gear, but it’s not for everybody, and the gear has to fit the person, especially since bluefins are averaging larger sizes than they did a few years ago.

Although bluefins are getting bigger and fewer, Whitaker believes Atlantic coast bluefins should go through the smaller-size cycle again soon.

“Last year from the middle to the end of March, we had school after school of younger bluefin tuna in the 70- to 80-pound class,” he said. “It was a tremendous body of fish that kept passing by here during a couple of weeks.”

Whitaker said those fish probably will be 120 pounds during 2007-08 and 150 to 160 pounds the following year.

He checked with Dr. Barbara Block of Stanford University (who has tagged about 1000 big bluefin tuna). She agreed these fish would have a big year during 2009-10.

Dan Rooks runs the Tuna Duck out of Hatteras and also estimated the main season for big bluefin tuna typically runs from the middle of December through middle February.

“We take about 25 to 50 percent of the total in January, so it’s a decent month,” he said, “but the season is unpredictable.

“We’ve had big fish here as early as October and as late as Easter. We had 100-pound fish running up the beach during May.”

During January, big bluefin tuna range from east of Diamond Shoals and southward.

“They’re usually in two groups,” Rooks said, “the nearer bunch in 60- to 70-feet near shore over rough bottom that holds bait such as big bluefish and menhaden and a more distant group at the continental shelf at the 28- to 35-fathom (168- to 210-foot) curve, eating whatever’s out there.”

Rooks recalled and incredible day when one of his regular clients, David Dodsworth, who has winter-fished with him the past seven years, caught a big bluefin while using spinning tackle.

“Yes, spinning tackle,” Dodsworth said. “It was three years ago, and we had to make a 2 ½-hour run to Cape Lookout.

“(The bluefins) had come to the 60-foot shoals off Morehead that morning but were probably deeper during the night. You could have walked across the menhaden they were so thick. The tuna were crashing through them and leaping out of the water.

“The menhaden were packed and lifted up in an overlapping mass like the tiled roof of a house. There were acres and acres of 200-pound-class (bluefins).”

Dodsworth said they were hooking up double after double by trolling sea witches and ballyhoos. He said he finally asked Rooks if he could try one on spinning gear and Rooks agreed.

But the anglers got more than they had bargained.

Dodsworth rigged up one of his artificial lures (he manufactures tackle under the name offshorepursuits.com) and hooked up immediately. The fish stripped the spool almost at once, and Rooks had to get the boat up and running to chase the fish.

When the bluefin reversed field and headed toward the stern, it was all Rooks could do to turn on a dime and get out of the way.

The captain said the Tuna Duck was skipping and wheeling like a ballet dancer, alternately leaping out of the way and pirouetting to catch up. Eventually Dodsworth landed the first big bluefin tuna reportedly taken with spinning gear.

But once was enough. In an “aw shucks” moment, he said when the bluefins are thick, “they’ll bite anything.

“We got lucky. It was the best time to fish, in the middle of the week when only a half dozen boats were out there.”

Dodsworth said bluefins boated by anglers last year seemed to average larger than usual, citing a mean weight in the mid-300-pound range.

“And don’t forget that 800-pound-class fish are caught almost every year from the Atlantic coast,” he said.

Dodsworth fishes for bluefin tuna at Cape Cod and Canada each summer then at Cape Hatteras during the winter and noted some curious differences.

For years the biggest bluefins were caught in fish traps off Prince Edward island, Canada, he said, sometimes seven to 10 fish in a single day. But those giants aren’t seen in such numbers off the N.C. coast.

Since restrictions were imposed on the Canadian herring trawl fishery, where herring were the main food of bluefin, the bigger fish of 800 to 1,000 pounds have returned to Prince Edward Island. But we don’t see them off the N.C. coast.

Perhaps, Dodsworth said, they follow other baitfishes (not menhaden) well offshore where it wasn’t worth a commercial trip because of catch limits. Bluefins may travel to the Bahamas or Bermuda, but he wasn’t sure.

“I do know,” he said, “they don’t talk about 1,000-pounders here.”

Some suggest N.C. anglers may use tackle that’s too light to handle granders because most local skippers prefer 80-pound gear with 100-pound-test line.

Dodsworth rejected that idea by pointing out anglers who use 130-pound gear up north for giant bluefin also come to North Carolina each winter with the same tackle and still don’t see really big fish.

Dodsworth also talked to Barbara Block about the big movements of smaller fish, such as the two-week run off Hatteras last March. He said there’s a new program called Tag-A-Tiny that’s tracking the new cohort that appeared last year off Cape Cod.

“The 50- to 150-pound tunas in that batch are abundant, and everyone is fully chartered up there; the boats getting 15 to 20 fish daily,” he said. “So there are a lot of juvenile fish around, and if they all grew up to be giants, there wouldn’t be an issue about taking bluefin tuna any more.”