Skipjacks have distinct horizontal stripes.

Most Floridans consider the little tunny and skipjack to be “inedible” because their flesh is so red. But remember: beefsteak is red, too, and that implied comparison is by no means far-fetched. If you fillet a “bonito,” separate the lighter meat from the darker, and then slice thin steaks off the lighter portion, you’ll have the making of delicious “minute steaks.” After you sear both sides quickly in a hot pan with butter and garlic, you might like them as well as, or maybe better than, thin slices of beef treated in the same manner.

At the other end of the tuna size spectrum is the giant bluefin. Once plentiful in annual migratory runs, these monsters are not extinct quite yet, but their stocks are so depleted that the scattered catches now being made each spring in The Bahamas always cause wild excitement among younger fishermen and bitter nostalgia among the few old hands who still remember when waves of them swept past the western Bahamas each spring—enough to support a half-dozen major tournaments at Cat Cay and Bimini. There were so many giant tuna, in fact, that some of them often split from their main migratory route to visit other islands. Catches were recorded less plentifully but nearly annually at West End north of Bimini, and across the Bahamas Bank off the Abacos, particularly out of Walkers Cay.

Florida sneaked into the act at times. The bluefin migrations began each spring in the northern Gulf, but only a few giant tuna were caught off the Panhandle coast because the effort there was never very consistent. Along the southeast coast during the 1960s, anglers trolling between Dade and Palm Beach counties occasionally encountered a school of wayward migrators, but such incidents were unpredictable; moreover, they were seldom pleasant, considering that unsuspecting fishermen were armed only with standard sailfish tackle.

In The Bahamas it was a far different story. From the 1950s into the early 1970s, giant bluefins by the staggering ton were caught and piled on the dock during tournaments. Obviously, such a practice would be considered shameful by today’s sporting standards, but it was not a factor in the subsequent rapid decline of the stocks. That happened only after the giant fish became targets of high-tech longlining around 1970—a market having finally been developed in the Orient for their use as sashimi and fresh steaks.

Dr. Ray Waldner tested light tackle to its limits on this 24-pound Florida bonito.

You might still catch a giant tuna in the western Bahamas if you have the time (at least a week, if not two) and the finances (for charter and living expenses) to hunt one of the few schools that still come through. And in May or early June, you might even hook a giant bluefin by sheer luck on either side of The Bahamas. You won’t have much of a chance to land it, though, unless you happen to be fishing for blue marlin with heavy tackle when it strikes.

Since this is a survey of the whole tuna field, acknowledgement must be given to a couple of rare tunas that are not viable angling goals even though they do rarely show up on the end of a line. These are the albacore and the bigeye tuna. The albacore is seldom encountered because it is a temperate type that doesn’t much like our warm water. The bigeye is seldom encountered because it doesn’t much like any water that’s near the surface, where virtually all bluewater fishing baits are deployed.

And that brings us, at last, to the two species that carry most of Florida’s tuna-fishing effort on their muscular shoulders—the blackfin and the yellowfin. Both are beautiful in appearance and wonderful on the grill, but it’s their fabled fighting ability that makes them the champions of most pound-for-pound-greatest-gamefish arguments. Although the two species sometimes run in similar weights and in each other’s company, the yellowfin is the true king of Florida tunas, usually scaling in the range of 30 to 100 pounds and sometimes exceeding 200. Blackfins, by contrast, generally run around 10 to 15 pounds and, although the record is about 45 pounds, they don’t often top 30.