AS SEEN IN THE MAY/JUNE 2006 ISSUE

Key West guides break new ground with the regions toughest target

Back in the 1970s, landing any member of the tuna family on fly was pretty darn difficult. Sure, plenty of bonito and small blackfin tuna were caught by trolling ballyhoo and primitive cedar plugs, but no matter how hard you tried, tuna just couldn’t be teased to the boat like dolphin – they pretty much blasted baits at mach speed and quickly disappeared. As the 21st Century approached and fast, light-tackle boats started to appear on the scene, fly-rodders were finally able to chase schools of busting tuna and bonito crashing baits just off the reef. Typically, this type of activity only occurred during the winter months when conditions were far from ideal.

At the time, the plan was to run up-wind of the surface commotion and cast to the frenzied fish. This was, and still is, a lot more difficult than it sounds. Every time you’d get in position, the school would sound. Also, you had to cast downwind in the same direction you were drifting, which meant you would also drift back on top of your fly line.  Most of the time you lost so much ground in the stiff breezes that you couldn’t strip the fly fast enough to grab the tuna’s attention. It was pretty frustrating and usually, after a few attempts with a fly rod, a spinning rod with a one-ounce jig looked pretty inviting. Today, some 30 plus years later, tuna and bonito are still crashing baits off the reef, and they are still next to impossible to hook with a fly rod, but new areas and innovative techniques are emerging off the southern most Keys that are changing all of that.

The Key West Tuna Fishery.
When, Where, & How Did It All Start?

Even though I’ve spent the better part of my adult life traveling the world angling, there are very few angling innovations that I can actually take credit for, but this one is all mine! Back in April of 1980, Bob Royall and I regularly fished the Gulf’s rich waters just north of Key West. I was in the running for the Met Master Angler Trophy that year, and we took a week off to do some serious fishing. This was right after LoranC became available for small boats. We had collected a few sets of numbers on various wrecks that previously could only be found by running a timed course at a specific speed from a particular point. Just like today, at that time shrimp boat by-catch provided a major advantage in wreck fishing, but without a Loran you could only get your hands on some fresh chum if a ‘shrimper’ was within sight of Smith Shoal, just to the northwest of Key West, which really didn’t happen very often. If you were brave enough to venture north to look for chum, you had to return to Smith Shoal to start your run to the wreck, so it was rarely worth the effort. With the introduction of a fairly accurate, user friendly navigational system, everything changed.

On the first morning of our expedition, naturally, there were no shrimp boats in sight of Smith Shoal, so we ran north till we spotted the fleet. We ran up on a shrimper still culling his catch, and asked if we could tie up behind him and climb aboard to hand pick some permit crabs. I guess I was up there for 30 minutes or so, picking out select crabs and handing 5-gallon buckets of assorted by-catch down to Bob, who in his down time, would hook bonito from the huge school hovering behind the shrimper. When I completed my task, I pushed a big pile of by-catch over the side so we could watch the excitement below with bonito, sharks, and porpoises all competing for their piece of the pie. To our surprise, a few of these fat black things raced through the mix. At first, we weren’t exactly sure what they were, but soon there were dozens mixed in with the much smaller bonito. It didn’t take us long to realize we had stumbled upon a mother-lode of big blackfin tuna.

When we returned to Oceanside Marina that afternoon, we had landed blackfin tuna over 25lbs. on every type of tackle imaginable, including fly. Needless to say, the outstanding catch created quite a stir. The next morning we ran right back to the fleet and found more blackfin. In fact, there were tuna behind several of the shrimp boats. The only problem was hooking the tuna out of the concentrations of bonito which outnumbered them ten to one. Every time we hooked a bonito, we’d simply pop it off and re-rig. After several days, Bob and I owned every lead in every tuna category in the Met Tournament. Key West guides were going nuts! No one had ever seen that many big blackfin tuna in the spring. After teasing legendary Key West angler RT Trosset for a few weeks, I finally revealed to him what we were doing and within a few weeks, the rabbit was completely out of the hat. 

Today more than 25 years later, the shrimpers are down off New Ground but the blackfin tuna are still there. The key to finding success in this fishery is to locate a boat culling its catch in clean, blue water. If the water is murky or greenish, all you’ll find are scores of bonito, which appear almost immediately if they are anywhere in the area. For the prized blackfin, you will have to be a little more patient; although, if none appear after 20 minutes of chumming, move on to investigate another shrimp boat.


Gear Up For Tackle Busting Tuna.

To be on the winning end of battles with Gulf blackfin, you really need a twelve-weight fly rod. These fish can exceed 30 pounds and are blistering fast and super strong. I use the oldest fly line I have, usually cut back to a 30 foot shooting head, followed by 50 yards of 80lb. PowerPro. The blackfin have a tendency to run out and circle, and many times they end up wrapped in the shrimper’s nets or around anchor lines, so you want a fly line that is expendable. Casting is not really an issue – the fish usually hit right next to the boat.

Any natural baitfish pattern will work, but to increase your odds of hooking the larger tuna as opposed to the scrappy bonito, throw a big white popper. Trosset prefers his Bump Chenille fly because it’s cheap and painless to break off when the wrong species attacks it. You don’t want to pop off twenty Chris Dean Specials at $6.00 each, which can happen very easily. If you’re just getting started, I recommend 20lb. Mason Hard Tippets without a shock. Tuna have exceptional eyesight, even in an active chum line. You don’t need a shock leader, so why use one and cut down on your strikes?
 
Bonito, however, don’t care. Actually, I don’t want to belittle bonito. A great number of the IGFA records for little tunny have come from behind shrimp boats north of Key West. These speed demons are so thick here; you can catch them until your arms fall off. And if you think they are easy – try fighting a dozen on a ten-weight.

Catch a severe case of Yellowfin Fever

Over the years, fishing alongside some of Key West’s most notorious captains, I’ve consistently caught blackfin tuna in the Gulf north of Key West during the spring and fall months. However, in December, the area of opportunity changes. Seasonal migration patterns bring the schools of big blackfin, which are now accompanied by the occasional giant yellowfin tuna, to the oceanside. Since this exciting Key West tuna fishery was discovered, the problem was how to catch these fast moving fish on fly. Guides have recently solved that problem when they realized that both species could effectively be chummed to the transom with live pilchards, not only along the relatively shallow reef, but also in the vicinity of some of the deep-water wrecks.

A typical Key West oceanside tuna trip begins with an hour or more of chasing pilchards on the flats. It’s the only place I’ve seen such a wide array of 30ft. center-consoles plodding around in three feet of water. Sometimes an entire morning can be spent capturing bait, but it’s usually well worth it. A steady stream of ‘livies’ over such areas as Boca Grande Bar can attract blackfin, enormous yellowfin to 200 pounds, smoker kingfish, wahoo, and even the occasional sailfish. For this type of fly fishing, you can never have too many pilchards, but the guides know when to call it quits.

Success here requires that you don’t even attempt fishing with anything lighter than a twelve-weight, and if and when the golden finlets of the yellowfin tuna appear in the slick, you’ll be wishing for an eighteen-weight. These members of the tuna family are like sub-surface dump trucks with race car speeds. You’ll need a large arbor reel like the Nautilus 12S, or Tibor’s Gulfstream, or even the Pacific. Trosset has found that clear monocore “slime line” is the most effective because at times the ability to cast 70 feet is a major advantage.  If the fish are hanging back and deep, a fast sinking line may be the way to go, but it varies from day to day, so the only real solution is to come prepared with several outfits.

To stand even a chance of success with the yellowfin during their short, two week visit, you’ll need a 60lb. fluorocarbon shock with at least a 20lb. class tippet. Be careful what you wish for though, because if lady luck is on your side and you do hook a big yellowfin, be prepared to invest a few hours in the battle. These fish are wicked. Blackfin tuna are much more consistent and much more cooperative, and they’re not nearly as much work

On occasion, toothy kings are present. To land these fish you’ll obviously need wire, but once you commit to a wire shock, you can give up on catching tuna. With huge pupils, tuna spot wire pretty quickly.

The only other place that I’ve ever fished that compares with Key West’s style of chumming for tuna is Bermuda, where renowned anglers Flip Pallott and Bob Brien recently joined me for one such adventure. After finessing yellowfin after yellowfin, we all agreed that there really isn’t any reason their style of chumming wouldn’t also work here in Key West. In Bermuda, like in the popular New England yellowfin tuna fishery that takes place out in the canyons, there really isn’t any way to capture hundreds of pilchards, so charter boats run out to underwater seamounts, ledges, and deep water depressions, and chum with dead glass minnows and freshly cut chunks of anything  that’s available. The yellowfin tuna respond extremely well to this form of chunking just as they do to live chumming here in Key West. Who knows? Maybe a few local guides should give it a shot and see what develops.

I for one can tell you that if you’re looking to expand the boundaries of your fly fishing pursuits, next time you visit this southernmost port, hire a local guide and give tuna fishing a try. There’s nothing I like to do more.   

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