Chuggers, left and right, and deepjigs, center, catch their share of blackfins.

Michaels fought his blackfin for 45 minutes before bringing it alongside the boat. Capt. Derwood Roberts, skipper of the charterboat Adventurous, gaffed the fish and flopped it onto the deck and inside the fish box.

Unruh’s battle would take longer because of the broken reel. It took a solid hour to tire his blackfin and bring it around for gaffing. By the time Roberts had the fish bled and into the box, the fisherman, who appeared a bit battle-worn himself, was seeking shade and refreshments before taking on another blackfin anytime soon. Next time, I would give him a better reel with which to do battle.

By now, the water was even more alive as Michaels, Jason Diaz, the 16-year-old nephew of Unruh, and I continued to toss chunks of mullet, ballyhoo, croakers and everything else in the box at the thrashing fish. It was Jason’s first tuna trip, but he was battling tuna and bonito like an old pro. He hung in there and stayed with the action throughout the day.

Soon, Unruh joined us again, and the bite-on-every-cast action resumed. “I don’t think there was a time we went 10 minutes without hookups,” the Alaskan charter captain said later. We kept our mate, Pat Stone of Merritt Island, busy throughout the day boating and releasing blackfins and bonito after he took over the duties from Roberts.

I don’t know how many blackfins and bonitos we caught that day, but it was all the action any angler could hope for on any trip. We kept eight blackfins and released the rest. I also kept a king mackerel that struck my lure on the last cast of the day.

Casting for blackfins is one of my favorite types of fishing. Once we get a school of tuna around the boat, it means solid action, often for long periods of time. The key is to keep chumming with chunks of bait; this is what attracts fish to the boat and puts them in a feeding mood.

A word of advice to would-be tuna anglers, however: I would not recommend using artificial lures unless you have plenty to spare. Michaels and I went through every artificial lure in my tackle box that day, including Windcheaters, Trader Bay Trout Slayers and Blues Busters to even smaller Rat-L-Traps. It takes an arsenal of plugs, regardless of how well one finesses the fish. When the tunas are thick, fellow blackfins, bonito or even sharks will frequently swim by and cut the line. It happened to us time after time.

The faster we worked the plugs, the better chance we had of hooking up with a blackfin. Blackfins seem to be faster than bonito and will often outswim them to slam a lure that is retrieved at breakneck speed. After hooking up, though, the trick is to try to keep the fish away from the main school. Unless you’ve witnessed it firsthand, it’s hard to imagine the pandemonium and excitement that takes place when the water is alive and churning with fish gone amok. Lines are snapping, lines are crossing, adrenaline is pumping and anglers go crazy with excitement. It’s chaotic, but it’s fishing at its best.

I first got the idea of using topwater lures for blackfins on a midwinter trip aboard the Canaveral charterboat Ticket. My friend Don Shaw and I, along with Ticket owner Ed Duda, got into plenty of action that day as we chummed up schools of blackfins from behind a shrimp boat. I watched with excitement as Captain Ed Dwyer coaxed blackfins to his popping lures, and made a mental note to try the technique on later trips.

It’s well known that blackfin tuna often lurk below schools of bonito—hard-fighting fish in their own right that are extremely abundant along the entire east coast of Florida. What I’ve found is that the blackfins seem to rise to the occasion when a noisy plug is reeled fast, skipping and chugging across the waves. From my observations, I seriously believe that blackfins can outswim or outmuscle bonito to get to the plug first, especially if your retrieve is fast and furious.

Numerous charterboats at Port Canaveral target blackfin tuna when the fish are migrating through or hanging outside the port following baitfish schools. Many of the skippers happily accommodate anglers who wish to bring along casting gear and an arsenal of topwater plugs. When the fishing turns on, you don’t have to go all the way out to the Gulf Stream and beyond, like you do for yellowfin tuna. You can find great action in water ranging from 120 to 160 feet deep.

In addition, you may find that the topwater approach works in other blackfin fisheries around the state. Off Miami, for instance, where migratory blackfins occasionally rise to a chumline of live pilchards or shrimp, a plug may be just the ticket to an explosive strike and a bout of line pulling. Ditto for the Upper and Middle Keys, where blackfins hang around the offshore humps much of the year. And what about all those tenacious tunas that gather around the shrimp fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, northwest of Key West?

It’s up to you to give it a try.

FS