Casting for tuna anyone?

[fin]

I was just wondering has anyone utilised a casting technique with either lures or dead bait for tuna? Any stories out there? I am very curious to hear a few.

YOURS FIN

[Fishmagician]

Fin, we have a lot of luck at casting for tuna with what we call "JIGS" they are generally cast at schools, or kelp paddies that are free drifting and agragate the fish underneat them...we use 30 - 40 pound test. The jigs are about 4 -7 inches and up to 5 oucnces, we let them sink for a while before cranking them as fast as possible..Now there are a couple of different methods....one is to used a heavy blue and white or blue and chrome, and drop it straight down a 100 feet of so, under the albacore or kelp and crank it straigh up as fast as you can. High speed reels will help in this game. We find albacore, blue fin, and yellowfin will chase them down, you can not crank them to fast. The strike is shoulder jaring...hang on to that rod and reel. Now, when the tuna are on the surface we'll employ lighter jigs, and salt water suface poppers to entice those raschals. If the boat preasure isn't to heaviy they'll cooperate. Give it a try...you'll like it.

Capt. Mike Fisher

[skip]

Mike,

Interesting stuff as always. Sounds like another void in our tackle repertoire that we need to add. On the surface poppers do you advise floaters or sinkers? And approx what oz weight if targetting say 50lbs Tuna and 20lbs tuna/albacore respectively for the casting jigs. I note Braid Products have some pretty nice slammer jigs or do you recommend something else/cheaper perhaps Mike?

Do you think you could explain in a bit more detail about the boat pressure remark? Do you mean in terms of displacement causing pressure in the surrounding water?

Skip

[Fishmagician]

Skip the boat presure I'm speaking of is the number of boats. Southern California has thousands of offshore fisherman, and when the all converge on a small area,,,there's a lot of traffic. That can put the fish down...

[fin]

Hey mike,

what is your view though on number of boats in a concentrated area? I am of the thought if there is one miserable boat out fishing it might never bring the fish up to surface, however if there are around half a dozen boats in a around 10 miles square could this entice fish up. I can see your point about having too many boats then that could spoil the broth, so what is too much boat pressure in terms of area per boat?

Cheers FIN