Fly Fishing Reel Girl

Yellowfin or Ahi or Hamachi tuna will eat just about anything! However their primary diet consist of cephalopods like squid, crab and other fish like baitfish you can get at the baitfish doc on your way out. In San Diego this is usually sardines and anchovies (anchovies are pretty fish by the way) anyways.

Yellowfin dwell in subtropical and tropical waters and are pretty prominent in Southern California and Mexico likely because of the obvious waters temperatures between 64 and 87 degrees Fahrenheit and thermocline water gradients. Thermocline can be described by divers to be much like an atmosphere which is 33ft. These are like invisible lines between temperature gradients which occur normally every 33ft in the ocean or by heat from the sun which warms the surface temperature of the water and then mixes due to tidal flows, currents and wind (weather). So a thermocline can occur in depths shallower then 1 ocean atmosphere.

What does this mean to you? It means that when fishing for yellowfin tuna, that on choppy water days, you might get luckier. One of my superstitions is that when I feel a warm wind, I stop. Now my boat captain thinks I am full of shit but if you are like me, you notice things like this and stop to drop your line. This isn’t so much a superstition but more that I consider myself to be in tune with nature. This superstition can be explained because what I am actually experiencing is a natural phenomenon where the warmer wind isn’t necessarily coming from a zephyr but from the changing surface temperatures that are released when the waters mix.

And if being a spiritual fisherman doesn’t work for ya, then look for currents which you can see with your eyes as sections of water that are flowing in the opposite direction. Now, yellowfin or as we layman like to call um, yellowtail, are anti-social fish. Yellowtail found is schools are prolly too small to keep so it isn’t really worth your time to look for schools of yellowtail.

Your best bet is to look for dolphins. Unlike the fisherman’s nemesis, the seal; yellowtail are sensitive to sonar. They are easily disturbed by boats, so I can only guess that is the reason they hang with the dolphins or around kelp patties or debris; because it refracts the sound from annoying human behaviors although smaller ones can be found with skipjacks or bigeye tuna.

There isn’t a whole lot to tell you about the yellowtail or yellowfin tuna accept to say that they are good fighters so good tackle is a must, in cases of having a larger yellowtail hooked it may take you a while to bring it in and you may want to get a gaff. Currently, the limit of yellowtail in California is 10 per day and it is illegal to sell them without a commercial license. Other than that, chumming seems to be effective, trolling not so much unless you have a good trolling line set up with at least six baits and lures likes squids ought to do pretty well though I suggest live bait #6-10 hooks and 30lb test line unless you are trying to catch a whopper, then I suggest at least 100 lb. tackle line. But let’s get real, most of us aren’t out to catch a 300 lb. tuna!

Yellowfin spawn all year long in and lay about 2-4 million eggs and grow pretty fast. At about 1 year the size of a yellowtail is about 1.5 ft, at two years they are about 2 3/4 ft and by five years nearly 5 1/2 ft. So they grow about a foot every year but on average their sizes are apx. 1 1/2 to 5 feet but can get about 6 feet plus weighing in anywhere from 6 lbs. to 400 lbs. For most of us recreational fisherman, our average catch prolly weighs anywhere from 6 lbs. to 60lbs.