Port Lucaya, Bahamas Yellowfin Tuna Fishing
We left on Saturday morning out of Boca Inlet with about 400 pilchards and 3 flats of sardine chunks and headed north to get some sardines, because what we had still felt light for what we'd be doing. Quickly loaded the floor well with deens and headed for an extremely smooth crossing.
We made it over in a little under 2 hours, cleared customs, dropped off some stuff at the hotel and went out prospecting. We found many flocks of birds, fished em for a couple of hours, but no bites. Headed out and got a some silk snapper for dinner.
We woke up at 5 the next morning, took forever loading the boat, and left the dock at about 7am. We found the flocks right out front, only 2 miles out of Port Lucaya, and within 30 mins of leaving the dock, we were tight to a double of Yellowfin Tunas. The first one was a small one, about 15 lbs. The 2nd of the double was a nice 40 lb fish... and they just kept getting bigger. We wanted some time to chill so we headed back to the dock with 5 Yellowfins in the boat between 41 and 62 lbs and that small one. Believe me when I tell you that these things DO NOT mess around.
The first trick to this is pretty obvious, find the birds. It gets tricky after that. These fish are very spooky. If you don't run up on them just right, you'll drive them down and miss your shot for a little while. It's all about the chunks and drifting your hooked bait back naturally with the chunks. We had a good amount of live chummers but did a lot better on the chunks.
We spent a little time on Monday looking for them before we left but wanted to do some deep dropping for queens before heading home. Ended up making 4 drops and getting a nice one while losing a couple more. We we're all beat with a total of 8 hours sleep over 3 nights so we headed home at about 11am with smiles ear to ear!
The tackle is very simple! Just a 300ft section of 80lb Bullbuster Fluorocarbon connected with any knot you prefer with a 5/0 heavy wire circle hook snelled to your leader. The snell is very important. Be careful and test your knots! We lost a fish to a bad knot, but luckily hooked the same fish in 10 seconds and got out hook back! Try to use 30-50 wide reels to put some heat on them, there are sharks around so light tackle is doable, but could get you into some trouble.
All in all this was an epic trip and a smashing success! Can't wait for the next one!
-Morgan