The Unknown Tunas

Bigeye and blackfin tuna are present in N.C. waters most of the year, but anglers usually target them only from June to September.

Bigeye tunas are among the largest, while blackfin tunas are among the smallest of their species swimming in North Carolina’s offshore waters. Both are poorly understood by sport fishermen, who are most familiar with bluefin and yellowfin tunas.

Briefly, yellowfins are in the Gulf Stream year-round, average 25 to 60 pounds but get much larger. Small bluefins in the 40- to 60-pound class are mixed with yellowfins off Hatteras in the spring.

Giant bluefins appear in N.C.’s shallow, cold coastal waters from Hatteras to Morehead City during November through mid-February. Bluefins and yellowfins are taken by fast trolling with meat baits (ballyhoo) or lures (Hawaiian eyes, etc.) or by chunking with cut fish from a drift.

Both can be taken stand-up with high quality gear, but most of them are caught from fighting chairs.

Blackfin tunas are important sport fish in the Gulf of Mexico, where they mix with skipjack tuna and Atlantic bonito on the surface.

In our waters, they’re common from Oregon Inlet to Wilmington but extend to southern Brazil.

In the Gulf of Mexico, charter boats and head boats target blackfins — but not here. In our waters, blackfins are taken most often by charter boats running through or near a surface feeding frenzy marked by baitfish flying out of the water and tuna backs breaking the surface with wild splashes and sometimes birds overhead.

Local skippers usually run to these disturbances in hopes of locating surface yellowfins, but usually the schools are fat alberts (false albacore) or skipjack tuna and Atlantic bonito mixed with a few blackfins.

Tar Heel anglers seldom get big schools of blackfins, which tend to be scattered in ones and twos among other fish. The principal food of blackfin tunas are small herrings and anchovies.

They average 5 to 15 pounds but get much bigger. Blackfins in the 20- to 30-pound class have been taken everywhere, and they can attain 50 pounds. Most are taken here accidentally by trolling ballyhoo.

Hard fighters on light tackle, they’re no match for 50-pound-class gear. The peak season for blackfins is mid summer to fall, when the water is hot.

Blackfins have been reported to have an excellent meat for sashimi and sushi. I’ve tried it and find it too soft for my taste, but most of the local guys say it’s just fine grilled when based with Italian dressing.

All boats targeting tunas must have a federal permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service. But there’s no catch limit (or permits needed) for blackfins, the limit for yellowfin is generous, and the limit for bluefins is tightly regulated, seldom more than one of a certain size per boat, with seasons opening and closing based on the most recent catch and population data.

Bigeye tunas are so poorly understood that few regulations apply and so lightly fished that (at least in the Atlantic), they aren’t depleted.

First, some life history information is in order.

Bigeye tunas range through all the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans with the major commercial fishery in the Pacific, where long-liners target bigeyes for their fatty meat and high prices on the Japanese sashimi/sushi market. Pacific bigeyes have a market value estimated at $500 million to $1.5 billion.

The seasonal locations of Pacific bigeye are predictable. Small bigeyes (40 to 60 pounds) are frequently in groups of mixed tunas, where they’re taken by purse seines on the surface near fish aggregation devices (FADs) and floating structures, often set near sea mounts.

Large bigeyes (200-pound range) are also associated with sea mounts but are deeper, concentrated within the 63- to 73-degree Fahrenheit thermocline (where the ocean temperature changes from warm (near the surface) to cold (toward the abyss).

Bigeye tunas feed day and night, at all depths, and on all types of baitfish and shellfish, including crustaceans and shrimp. The giant larvae of several crustaceans, including mantis shrimp, are a major food of bigeye tunas.

The deeper, bigger fish are taken by long lines.

Everywhere they’ve been studies, their principal food consists of squid.

Captain Brynner Parks of the Smoker out of Oregon Inlet (252-473-1934) said bigeyes are a year-round fishery out of his home port.

Captains and other anglers never know when they’ll show up near the surface, but the commercial guys fishing the permanent thermocline with long lines (even here) take them at any time.

“They could show up on the surface any time,” Parks said. “There is no particular surface temperature or time of year.”

Local captains figure it’s likely these fish go where the food is, just like bluefins.

Jeff Ross, skipper of the Obsession out of Pirates Cove, said the peak season for bigeyes is June through the middle of July. But terrific bigeye fishing also occurs during September.

One September years ago, Aaron Wright, aboard the Outrigger, boated bigeyes of 124 and 143 pounds and said it was no big deal.

“Five or six boats out of 50 will get one or two,” Wright said, “and it’s hit or miss.

“This year the bigeyes were here in September, another year they might aggregate in October, and for the past three years, they would arrive in mid-June to mid-July and hang around for a month.

“They’re also here from late September through November, passing our area on their migrations between Montauk Point in the summer and Venezuela in the winter.”

Younger and smaller bigeyes continually hang out near The Point, at least for the first few years of life.

Parks said he had seen beautiful bigeye fishing out of Oregon Inlet in July, when the water was in the mid 80s.

“About 45 boats from Oregon Inlet, Wanchese and Pirates Cove took more than 200 fish in one day,” he said.

Some years before, he said, a vast aggregation of bigeyes was accompanied by aggregating brown sharks that attacked every hooked fish, so most came to the boat with chunks of flesh torn out. Anglers couldn’t get them boated fast enough to avoid the sharks.

The commercial guys fish for them during January and February, Parks said, taking seven to eleven fish per day, up to 300 pounds. The average fish’s weight, he noted, was 120 to 170 pounds.

The commercial fishermen work the thermocline (just as in the Pacific), but 90 percent of the Oregon Inlet and Pirates Cove skippers fish the surface, sometimes with planers.

When asked if there were key surface temperatures, Parks said it could be 65 degrees or 80 degrees; there is no special temperature. More important, he noted, is blended water that attracts baitfish and a deep bottom, where the bigeyes might be hanging around the deep thermocline, feeding on abundant giant crab larvae and squid.

Parks also said 90 percent of the bigeyes are taken in deep water of 80 to 200 fathoms, with most of the local skippers working the 100-fathom mark.

“And 80 percent are caught from 8 miles south of The Point to 10 miles north of The Point,” he said, “a pretty tight area.”

If there’s a trick to finding bigeyes, Park said it had to do with pilot whales.

“Where you see pilot whales, there’s a good chance you’ll find bigeyes,” he said.

Parks said most skippers fished surface lures, but a few guys also pulled planers. Only the commercials fished really deep into the thermocline, and only with long lines.

Buck Mann of the Broad Creek Fishing Center in Wanchese had the same experiences with bigeye tunas.

“They’re mostly 80 to 200 pounds, and they’re erratic,” he said. “If there are 40 boats out there, you can expect to see six or more fish among them, but they could be a lot more prevalent.”

Like Parks, Mann said the key area for bigeyes is at the 630 hole just north The Point.

“There’s a series of sea mounts around the 630, 650, and 680 holes at 100 fathoms,” he said, “and that’s where most of them will be taken.”

Mann fishes skipping baits (no planers or down-riggers), using a naked horse ballyhoo or, if a captain wants to troll faster to cover more ground, a Hawaiian Eye.

Why do some boats get them and others miss?

“It’s not a matter of finding them,” Wright said. “If they’re here, they’re abundant and spread across a lot of water. You can run back and forth over them time and again, and if they want to eat, they’ll eat. If they don’t want to eat, you’re out of luck. No hits doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong place.”

Capt. Daniel Davis on the Haphazard landed a 232-pound whopper during September some years ago, and had already taken seven or eight that year.

“You’ve got to run over the right school,” he said.

Bigeyes cover a large area but they’re in scattered schools. And they’re in different areas at different days, he said, emphasizing the 630 line, but sometimes even the 750 or the 900 line, wherever they cross ledges.

Certain ledges are more likely than others to hold bigeyes.

Davis looks mostly from The Point southward at ledges in 100 fathoms or deeper. He said bigeyes seem to remain at that area most of the season, usually in hot, blue water. But the best numbers arrive during October at the time of the full moon.

“If you want to catch a bigeye, you need to fish in the north,” Parks said in response to a question about other places in offshore N.C. waters these fish frequent — if they aren’t near The Point.

“Listen,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “We’ve taken more than 1,000 bigeyes sailing through Oregon Inlet and heading toward The Point.”