MONSTER YELLOWFIN TUNERS........

[Captain Fred Archer]

Speaking of big yellowfin...here's an attempt at drawing one making a fatal mistake...

[Patudo]

As some of you know I have a little experience fishing in the eastern atlantic. YFT definitely seem less common on our side of the atlantic. We just don't have the large numbers of short to say 40 lb yft that you do. Maybe this class of yft is associated with the Gulf Stream. There is no strong warm current like that in the east. In the Azores and Madeira the majority of the larger tunas are bigeye although records from the 1960s and 1970s seem to show that more YFT were taken then than now. More yellowfin show up in the island groups further south. It seems that their range has contracted to more tropical areas, possibly because stocks that did migrate further north got wiped out. Commercial pressure has certainly had a huge impact on the abundance and both the seasonal and geographical distribution of all tunas in the eastern atlantic. There is a massive commercial fishery in tropical African waters conducted by both EU and African nations taking large numbers of juvenile BET and YFT.

I don't know the western atlantic tuna fishery very well but re the subject of bait availability mentioned by Asylum it looks to me that the western atlantic continental shelf has enough bait to support plenty of 200 lb tunas but only a small % of these seem to be YFT compared to BFT and bigeye. The species mix changes as you go further south (gulf of mexico, VZ etc) so maybe the main body of larger yft does prefer those areas.

[Ace1st]

Good points Patudo......Thanks for the input.

[TROPHY SPORTFISHING]

Ace the state record NC yft was caught on one of my dads friends boats back in 79 237 lbs at the sw corner of the big rock either during the cape fear marlin tournament or the big rock bmt i can't remeber. we use to get a good run of yft's off wrightsville but seems like the last 3-4 yrs they haven't shown up mainly big blackfins we caught a few 3 yrs ago that were all 60-70 class fish but not sure what happened to them maybe they are by passing us on the east side not sure how much the hard sw winds have helped keep everything pushed offshore the past few springs either. My father started fishing around here in the late 40's and for what it's worth he never talked about catching alot of tunas until the late 70's but they killed their fair share of sails, whites, blues and mahi's a few wahoos thrown in the mix.

[Ace1st]

Ace the state record NC yft was caught on one of my dads friends boats back in 79 237 lbs at the sw corner of the big rock either during the cape fear marlin tournament or the big rock bmt i can't remeber. we use to get a good run of yft's off wrightsville but seems like the last 3-4 yrs they haven't shown up mainly big blackfins we caught a few 3 yrs ago that were all 60-70 class fish but not sure what happened to them maybe they are by passing us on the east side not sure how much the hard sw winds have helped keep everything pushed offshore the past few springs either. My father started fishing around here in the late 40's and for what it's worth he never talked about catching alot of tunas until the late 70's but they killed their fair share of sails, whites, blues and mahi's a few wahoos thrown in the mix.

Thanks Trophy..........yes your comments reflect the memories from Old Timers who fished the Georgetown Hole and the offshore ledges off Little River SC. Ive spoken with many who saw some unbelievable catches back in the days.