Tuna 2023

[jasmillo]

Tuna Fishing, 4 October 2024
As the calendar rolls over into September and especially October, the weather becomes far more inconsistent. There are still days of calm winds and flat seas, but the frequency of storms builds as well. At the same time, September can be the best opportunity to encounter an exotic or two. I had three trips with All-Rivers scheduled for the last week of September but all three were cancelled due to high winds (20+ knots with gusts in the 30’s) and seas (up to 20’). I was able to reschedule two day into October and rearrange most of fishers to these days.

The first trip was for Wednesday, 4 October. The forecast for Wednesday was up and down from reasonable to not all week. I finally got the “we’re a go” message from Al Rivers on Tuesday morning and alerted the team. Our team of intrepid fishers include several grizzled veterans of the tuna wars and one newby.

It was still dark at 6:30AM as we walked over our boat and said hello to Captain Chance and Cal, the deckhand for the day. They helped stow our rods and bags and we were off. After a stop at the bait dock for a scoop of live anchovies, we were off, or so we thought. We exited the harbor and started out to the bar, but there was a problem with one of the engines – a blown lower unit apparently. So, we headed back to the dock. Fortunately, one of the other All Rivers boats was available that morning; we shifted all our gear, rods, cooler of ice, and the live bait to the other boat and we were off again.

The ride out was the usual pounding mess to the transition from the continental shelf to the continental slope. The swell was about 7’ from the WNW and the winds were 8-10 knots from the north, creating spotty whitecaps. I and @SteelHeadDave occupied the outside seats where the fresh air and visibility of the horizon assisted with avoiding sea sickness (but some salt spray). @SilverFly and @jasmillo rode the trip out inside the cabin.
Eventually, we were in the blue water favored by albacore, about 32 nautical miles WSW of Westport, right at the start of the continental slope. We set up in standard trolling formation with two rods off the back corners of the boat and two rods out perpendicular from up near the cabin. We had only been trolling for a few minutes when @SteelHeadDave ’s fly was grabbed but the fish didn’t stick. And none of us had strikes on the slide. With no tuna visible on the fish finder, we went back on the troll. @jasmillo ’s fly was the next to get bit. He fought it briskly and we soon had tuna blood on the deck. Back on the troll.

In the end, it wasn’t a red-hot day.
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We went 20-30 minutes between strikes. We observed only a few jumping tuna (not helped by all the whitecaps) and no substantial bird feeding activity. But we were persistent and kept at it. Most of our fish were caught on the troll, especiallty by @jasmillo who had the hot rod/fly.
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And @SteelHeadDave caught his first albacore.
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A few times, we picked up a second fish on the slide as the boat slowed down with the engines in neutral. In spite of throwing out live anchovies and individual flash-frozen anchovies, we just couldn’t get a solid stop going. We may have hooked one or two fish casting. And there often wasn’t much on the fish finder. So back to the troll. We ended up landing 12 albacore which ranged in size from peanuts to monsters.

The wildlife was impressive. We had multiple visits from pods of Pacific white-sided dolphins. They would race around the boat.
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At one point, they came by while @jasmillo and @SteelHeadDave were both fighting fish (a rare double on the day). The presence of the dolphins appeared to agitate the albacore and made it much harder to bring up to the surface. Cal, our deckhand, was pretty sure that he saw some of these dolphins tracking @SilverFly fly as he retried it from his casting position on the bow. At another point, we could see a fast-moving tight pod of 20-30 dolphins blasting around about 100 yards from the boat. We also saw a pair of humpback whales and a fur seal.

The bird life was diverse too. We had juvenile glaucous-winged gulls flying over the boat wash. They picked off the occasional sardine that were thrown over during a bait stop. We were buzzed several times by black-footed albatross; at one attempted bait stop, we had four albatross on the water just off the stern. We were also buzzed by pink-footed shrearwaters and Manx shearwaters. And there were a few northern fulmars in the area.

In the water, we had a large shark cruise by, probably a blue shark. And some flailing dorsal fin action a short distance from the boat was probably due to a mola mola.

So summary, some tuna were caught. We had good looks at some open ocean wildlife. Misty and overcast conditions in the morning transitioned to sunny, windier weather in the afternoon.

Steve
P.S. Round 2 is tomorrow (Friday). Report to follow.

It was great fishing with you all! The tuna in the pic was one of my favorite ever albacore hookups. On the slide and right at the boat. It had me in my backing in seconds with the drag pretty much clamped down to 100%. Gotta love the initial run on a fly rod of a large, mean tuna!

 

[Matt B]

The ocean was rough today, my friends.
All of our hookups were on the troll. I went up to the bow to fly cast about 3 times, and that was all I could handle. Plus, very little was happening on stops. (And we didn’t have sonar to see if we were over fish or not, and you couldn’t see crap through the swell, waves and chop). But, all five of us are coming home with 3 tuna a piece, and I feel fortunate for being able to go tuna fishing at all, let alone on two successful trips this year.
Relatively little wildlife spotted! (See rough ocean above)

 

[Buzzy]

The ocean was rough today, my friends.
All of our hookups were on the troll. I went up to the bow to fly cast about 3 times, and that was all I could handle. Plus, very little was happening on stops. (And we didn’t have sonar to see if we were over fish or not, and you couldn’t see crap through the swell, waves and chop). But, all five of us are coming home with 3 tuna a piece, and I feel fortunate for being able to go tuna fishing at all, let alone on two successful trips this year.
Relatively little wildlife spotted! (See rough ocean above)

I was glassing boats heading out of Westport this morning wondering who from the forum was going to brave the wind, the swells, the whitecaps, the waves....... we left Ocean Shores about 10:00 this morning, the wind had stiffened quite a bit from the time I rolled out. Glad y'all caught some tuna given the tough conditions. Well done. (Y'all might be masochists.)

 

[dbaken]

I was glassing boats heading out of Westport this morning wondering who from the forum was going to brave the wind, the swells, the whitecaps, the waves....... we left Ocean Shores about 10:00 this morning, the wind had stiffened quite a bit from the time I rolled out. Glad y'all caught some tuna given the tough conditions. Well done. (Y'all might be masochists.)

Your former Abel reel was on the boat today and scored some tuna. Nice reel for sure.

 

[Buzzy]

Your former Abel reel was on the boat today and scored some tuna. Nice reel for sure.

I’ve been sort of kicking myself for selling the reel: I want to try this tuna on the fly! Doug - I’m glad the reel worked well for you!

 

[SilverFly]

A somewhat quick reply until I wake up and let the ibuprofen kick in.

Wednesday was a learning day for me. Was tough getting blanked, but was very glad @SteelHeadDave got his first tuna, and a good one at that. Love seeing someone's mind blown the first time backing screams off their reel at 30mph. And thankfully @jasmillo picked up the slack catching 3/4 of the fish that day. If he wasn't such a chill/nice guy, I might have started to dislike him... just a little . Seriously though, crews on both days were great, and hope to fish with all of you again, and new recruits to this crazy fishery next year.

As for the learning part, I think we confirmed a new thing with albacore. I'm calling it "Whacky Tuna". I first experienced this a few years ago when trolling the large "gym sock" sized squids. I would get troll, slide, and even a few retrieve "taps" that didn't stick. So I down-sized to smaller, non-muppet squid patterns. Lo and behold I got hookups on the troll, slide, and casting/retrieving. Fast forward to this week, and I feel safe in saying that albacore tuna will short strike at times (I know, WTF, a fish that eats at speeds that would get you arrested in a school zone).

On Wed I fished my standard, tied on-the-hook flies. At least 3 times I had "whacks" that clearly were not bits of kelp, but no hookup. These happened on the troll, and on the slide. I was in full head-scratching mode, trying not to pout too much while Jason was putting on his troll/slide clinic. I had a few theories, but the fact that Jason was running a shank pattern with stinger hooks seemed the likely difference (although those Spawn head flies do kill a LOT of tuna).

So Thursday was camp tying day. Fortunately I had some shanks in my kit, and some 30# Power-Pro salvaged from a casting reel incident the previous week. Took me the better part of 4 hours to whip out these 3 with the breeze and UV resin curing as applied in direct sun.



I wasn't screwing around on Friday so started with the squid at top on the 14wt. Fished that same fly and rod all day. Zero whacks and ended up landing 4 and losing 2 to pulled hooks. The whack factor confirmation was at least 3 others experienced the same thing I did on Wednesday - but thankfully everyone caught fish.

 

[Matt B]

A somewhat quick reply until I wake up and let the ibuprofen kick in.

Wednesday was a learning day for me. Was tough getting blanked, but was very glad SteelheadDave got his first tuna, and a good one at that. Love seeing someone's mind blown the first time backing screams off their reel at 30mph. And thankfully @jasmillo picked up the slack catching 3/4 of the fish that day. If he wasn't such a chill/nice guy, I might have started to dislike him... just a little . Seriously though, crews on both days were great, and hope to fish with all of you again, and new recruits to this crazy fishery next year.

As for the learning part, I think we confirmed a new thing with albacore. I'm calling it "Whacky Tuna". I first experienced this a few years ago when trolling the large "gym sock" sized squids. I would get troll, slide, and even a few retrieve "taps" that didn't stick. So I down-sized to smaller, non-muppet squid patterns. Lo and behold I got hookups on the troll, slide, and casting/retrieving. Fast forward to this week, and I feel safe in saying that albacore tuna will short strike at times (I know, WTF, a fish that eats at speeds that would get you arrested in a school zone).

On Wed I fished my standard, tied on-the-hook flies. At least 3 times I had "whacks" that clearly were not bits of kelp, but no hookup. These happened on the troll, and on the slide. I was in full head-scratching mode, trying not to pout too much while Jason was putting on his troll/slide clinic. I had a few theories, but the fact that Jason was running a shank pattern with stinger hooks seemed the likely difference (although those Spawn head flies do kill a LOT of tuna).

So Thursday was camp tying day. Fortunately I had some shanks in my kit, and some 30# Power-Pro salvaged from a casting reel incident the previous week. Took me the better part of 4 hours to whip out these 3 with the breeze and UV resin curing as applied in direct sun.

View attachment 84922

I wasn't screwing around on Friday so started with the squid at top on the 14wt. Fished that same fly and rod all day. Zero whacks and ended up landing 4 and losing 2 to pulled hooks. The whack factor confirmation was at least 3 others experienced the same thing I did on Wednesday - but thankfully everyone caught fish.

The report from Wednesday was clearly why I tried to copy the Most successful fly from the day. And I landed 5 or 6 so I’m happy with how it did. I used 25 lb p-line fluoro looped over a 1/0 gami octopus for the stinger hook. I like it sitting out back where I want it. Down with floppy stinger material, I say. I was a little leery of the hook being a little wimpier than my normal tuna hooks but it wasn’t a problem. I didn’t hook any bigguns. I think I even might have forgotten to super glue the fluoro to the hook shank on that fly (tied in the CG the night prior while enjoying some fresh tuna and smoked chinook courtesy of @SilverFly (thank you!)

I had two whacks yesterday. On the first one, somebody else also got whacked and then somebody else got bit. I was a little miffed as that was my first action and there were already at least 4 or 5 fish in the boat. Checked my fly and the point was slightly rolled. I had left my gamis in the tying kit so I switched flies to the other fly from Thursday nights picnic table tying, dry similar, but different color spawn head. And then I went on a roll of catching.
We did get one triple hookup at one point, and some doubles. I got one more whack, and then 1.5 seconds later got bit. Whacky tuna. I think tuna whacks are

 

[Cabezon]

Today would be the last tuna trip of the year. This was a reschedule of the three days of cancellations the previous week. I tried to maximize opportunities to go offshore among the fishers who had their trips with me cancelled. For today, that means a 5-fisher team. As we gathered in the gloaming at the walkway above the dock, we could feel the winds blowing, a major factor that would impact our day.

According to Chance, our captain, the All Rivers fleet had headed north west of Westport on Thursday, but the fish were not there in numbers. So, we would be heading south west of Westport. In fact, we ended up fishing directly west of Oysterville on the Long Beach Peninsula, 36 miles WSW of Westport, and over the edge of the continental slope.

But before we get into the fishing, let’s talk about waves. Wave are created by one of three factors: wind, geological processes (such as some earthquakes), and the tides. Wind waves develop when air movement creates ripples in a smooth surface. The wind creates low pressure areas over the top of these ripples and higher pressure in the troughs. This enhances wave development as wind energy is transferred to water. Here Rainier rises in the pre-dawn light and you can see the wind-waves developing just outside the Westport harbor.


The height to which a wave will develop depends on a) wind speed, b) wind duration, and c) the fetch. Higher wind speeds produce bigger waves. Waves will also be bigger the longer that the wind blows and the greater distance that the wave will travel without hitting an obstacle (fetch). Wave heights are bigger as each of these factors increase, up to a maximum; at this limit, you have a fully-developed sea. For example, a wind speed of 12 mph, blowing over a 12 mile distance for 2 hours produces a fully-developed sea of wind waves whose average height is 0.9 feet. If winds are blowing at 23 mph, over 86 miles, and for 10 hours, they will produce waves whose average height is 5 feet. Once the seas are fully-developed, any more wind action leads to white-caps as the wave tops collapse when the wave height is large when compared to the wavelength.

In an area of active wave development, there will be waves of various sizes traveling at different speeds that interact as they encounter each other. The interaction of a trough of one wave and peak of another will cancel each other out. The interaction of two troughs or two peaks will intensify the wave height at a specific location. Energy is transferred from shorter waves to longer waves.

As waves are developing, there will be a range of wave sizes (the wave spectrum) that forms what is called a Reyleigh Distribution; a Reyleigh distribution looks like a normal distribution (a bell curve) but with a longer tail. Because waves follow a Reyleigh distribution, the occasional individual wave can be substantially larger than the average wave height.

Waves with longer wavelengths (and longer periods) travel faster than waves with shorter wavelengths (and shorter periods). And waves with longer wavelengths travel much further before their energy is dissipated by gravity and friction. Longer waves that have “outrun” the winds that produced these waves are called swells. The crashing waves that you see coming into the beach on a calm day are ocean swells – very regular in their timing and very similar (but not identical) in their height and speed.

O.K., professor (professor emeritus now). How is this relevant to your day on the water? First, we always expect to experience swells – long period, regular waves generated by storms sometimes thousands of miles away in the Pacific Ocean. These generally come from the west which makes the two-hour trip out to the edge of the continental slope so painful – pounding, pounding, pounding into the swell. Here you can see the sun rising through the spray kicked up as we plow into oncoming swells.



But if there isn’t much wind, these swells aren’t too much of an issue while trolling or on a stop. The boat rises as the wave crest rolls by and falls when we are in the wave trough. And the wave shapes are gentle enough that at trolling speeds, we aren’t pounding.

But yesterday, we had 10+ mph winds (with 20+ mph gusts) blowing from the east. At Westport, this produced ripples, but at 30+ miles offshore, there was plenty of time and distance for fully-developed wind waves to develop. And the winds out there were blowing the crests off these fully-developed waves to produce white caps. These waves came in a wide range of sizes and heights and interacted with each other and with the ocean swell which was coming in from the west.


We experienced a really sloppy sea, nothing regular about it.


The boat rolled and weaved in the waves like a bucking bronco. On the troll or at a stop, the occasional wave crest would break against the side of the boat and send spray onto the back deck. Casting from the bow took a real act of courage (or craziness) and the winds entangled any free fly line around any possible obstruction, like boat cleats. On the back deck, casting was also a real challenge. And the winds quickly blew us off of wherever the tuna had been when we had an initial contact on the troll. At one point, Captain Chance noted that even with the engines in neutral at a stop, the wind was pushing the boat sideways through the water at 1.3 knots.

In spite of the crazy conditions, the team persevered and landed 15 albacore tuna, more on the peanut size than on the jumbo side. In spite of the crazy sea state and 5 fly lines out on the troll, we had very few tangles. Yes, we caught most of our fish on the troll, but we picked up a few on the slide (when the boat is slowing with the engine in neutral after hooked a fish on the troll), and even one or two while casting. We never saw any surface feeding. Most stops were totally unproductive (though this has been more the rule this year).





After Doug landed a last troll fish, we packed up and stowed our gear in the rocking boat and headed back 36 miles north and east to Westport. Normally, the boat zips back at 20+ knots because we would be traveling with the ocean swells – a comfortable ride. But today, we were pounding into the wind waves coming out of the east; between pounding into waves and spray raining over the boat, it was a wet ride in for Doug and I riding in the outside seats. The trip home was initially far slower than normal and far more uncomfortable. It was too rough for our deckhand Victor to start carking the tuna until we were much closer to shore and the wave heights had dropped (due to the shorter fetch). Even so, Victor received several showers from spray that carried over the cabin to the back deck.

So, put a fork in this tuna season for me. One magical day in August, one good day with great wildlife in October, and one productive but challenging day in October. After living a charmed life regarding cancellations with All Rivers, I had four days cancelled / rescheduled due to extreme weather this season – just comes with this fishery. Time to start planning and dreaming of next summer.

Steve

 

[Bagman]

Can anyone give me where I can buy some of the Spawn heads that seem to be what is needed to catch all of the tuna.

 

[Evan B]

Can anyone give me where I can buy some of the Spawn heads that seem to be what is needed to catch all of the tuna.

Ask @SpawnFlyFish or go to his website ☺

spawnflyfish.com

 

[Bagman]

Ask @SpawnFlyFish or go to his website ☺

spawnflyfish.com

Thank you, I have some on order now.

 

[Bagman]

I opened up my first 1/2 pint of last years caned tuna, I was doing a Mod on Nicks formula I added a squirt of lemon juice and a 1/4t of canning salt to go with Nicks clove of garlic. I’m stoked on this formula. Best tuna sandwich I’ve ever had.