In April, pockets of bluefin tuna were verified on the central California coast near San Simeon, and then two weeks ago, they showed up off Monterey. “But there’s a chance they will like it here with all the feed and stick around, and maybe come back next year, too. “At first, this feels like a once-in-a-lifetime deal,” Claycomb Jr. With the rich feed conditions, anything might be possible, Claycomb Jr. “He walked me around the boat eight times, a marathon. “After an hour and a half, we’d get 5 or 6 yards of line, and the big tuna would then just take it right back,” Claycomb Jr. The first required an hour to land, he said, the second about 2 ½ hours. and Wilson chased the big bluefins for years out of San Diego without success, and then last week, caught a pair near their homes in Montara. At the boat, landing a big tuna can require two gaffs, which are large hooks set on a wood rod, plus a rope around the tuna’s tail, and three people to haul it in.Ĭlaycomb Jr. With rod and reel, a fight can last hours. with a big Pacific bluefin tuna he caught after a 21/2 fight near the Deep Reef out of Pillar Point Harbor Fred WilsonĬatching bluefin tuna requires specialized trolling skills where anglers run their boats at 5 and 6 mph, trailing giant skirted jigs and other lures, often far behind their boats. “That tuna tired out all five guys and we went through the rotation again before we landed it,” Mattusch said. On his boat, five experienced anglers took turns fighting a 5-foot bluefin. Whales all over the place, there’s lots of birds and the squid guys are happy.” “Bluefin are jumping all over, chasing the bait (anchovies). “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Mattusch said. Most believe the tuna have been drawn in by vast schools of juvenile anchovies that have also attracted large numbers of humpback whales and shorebirds to the area, said Tom Mattusch, captain of the Huli Cat, a sport fishing charter boat operating out of Pillar Point Harbor. Pacific bluefin are not endangered, but NOAA recognizes them as a species that has been overfished by commercial interests, and their stock assessment shows a slight improvement in recent years. They are mature at 5 years of age, and while most range from 60 to 80 pounds, they can get far heavier, and out of San Diego, sport-fishing operations recognize a “300-pound Club.” They are prized on the commercial market for their rich, tender red meat, which sells at premium prices at sushi markets and in Japan. Pacific bluefin tuna are best known for ranging the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, where they migrate thousands of miles off San Diego and Baja California and westward to Hawaii and beyond, according to NOAA Fisheries, which reports on the status of U.S. Fred Wilson lying with a giant Pacific bluefin tuna he caught out of Half Moon Bay at the Deep Reef Charlie Claycomb Jr. “Unbelievable how close they are, unbelievable how big they are,” said Charlie Claycomb Jr., who with his fishing pal Fred Wilson, caught two in a single trip in fights that lasted up to 2 ½ hours with fish 5 feet long weighing around 150 pounds each.Īnglers like to say hooking a big tuna is like standing on an overpass with a fishing rod, letting the line down and snagging a passing semi truck. The bluefin tuna arrived late last week near the Deep Reef, 10 miles out in Half Moon Bay, where anglers told stories of enormous fish, long fights and even losing 600 yards of line. These were often aberrations where the tuna were mixed in with schools of albacore in the fall, often at distances 30 to 100 miles offshore. In the past 50 years, anglers have caught Pacific bluefin tuna in a handful of encounters out of Bay Area harbors.
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