Conventional trolling lures, feather, plugs, even plastic eels score. Just match the size of baitfish present to increase odds of a hookup.

There are lots of things to consider when you chase tuna. Early out is important when it’s bright and calm. Tuna can be awfully leader shy but really have no teeth worth worrying about. Marginal gear has no place on a tuna trip. The fish are tough fighters and demand fresh line and butter-smooth drags. You don’t need very stout hooks for most Keys fish and should pick hooks you can easily set with your choice of gear.

Heading off toward seamounts often means you’ll cross part of the Gulf Stream. It moves up the coast at varying velocities during the year. You may leave the dock on an appropriate heading but you can be pushed off the mark if you don’t adjust for the sweep of the current. A 10-degree southerly adjustment is often enough to get you where you’re going when you leave from the Upper Keys but there is no substitute for a GPS to put you on the mark.

When chasing fish under birds, many folks crowd the fish. There are several tricks of the trade to getting hooked up. One is, do not run into bird activity. You can expect to catch fish if you run to the fringes then slowly troll into it.

Ideal trolling speed depends on conditions. When the forage fish present are small and not showing on top, pulling lures that skip the surface can be a waste of time. Small trolling baits that track on or just beneath the surface can be the key; to predators the appearance of weakness is often part of the attraction.

Tunas are boat shy. They often sound when a boat runs over them. If they’re in a good concentration of bait, the fish will pop up again but you might need to troll baits 100 yards behind the boat to give them time to do so with calm and quiet conditions. Tunas are more aggressive when it’s breezy, or when you have them strafing through a chum line (a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the droves of livebait fishermen in the Keys).

Blackfins are known for avoiding the whitewater part of the wake behind a trolling boat; finding the quiet water with your lures is often the only way to get bit. Every boat is different but a minimum trolling speed is typically six or seven knots when you scout for fish. Tunas can easily catch baits moving faster, if you give them time to settle down after you run over them.

Fishing little lures way back in the spread, while a proven tactic, has its own set of frustrations for the angler. For starters, the lures are tough to see back there. To perform at their best, tuna lures must run true; weeds can quickly spoil them.

That morning with D’Esposito, Butters and Herrera, we figured we’d be pushing our luck holding out for the skipjacks (the blackfins having made yet another of their disappearing acts), so we headed offshore for dolphin. We managed almost a limit of fish with one over 40 pounds.

On another trolling trip off Islamorada, I fished as a guest of Tom and Mike Flaherty aboard Tavernier Capt. Ron Green’s Daytripper. The conditions on this spring day seemed ideal—light boat traffic, a nice chop built by a 12-knot southeast wind, screaming current, and lots of bait. For several hours in the morning and later in the afternoon, we found plenty of birds diving. The birds helped point us to fish, but we got many of our bites while chasing after flyingfish put into the air by fish.

Conditions allowed the use of somewhat more conventional baits such as cedar plugs, feathers and small plastics. We still scaled back on leaders, though. Ron subscribes to the big dropback school, suggesting tuna indeed need time to recover from a boat passing overhead. It’s obvious many anglers do not understand this as we constantly waved off boats intent on crossing our lines. Those boats caught plenty of dolphin and so did we. Dolphin are famous for jumping into the boat wake to nail a lure; tuna are not, and next time you’re offshore you might consider the boat you are crossing behind is hooked to a fish.

The biggest problem (if you can call it a problem) that Tom, Mike and I encountered was that we had a hard time keeping our lures away from dolphin. They liked our tuna lures just fine, skipping along at Ron’s preferred 8-knot trolling speed.

We trolled a variety of baits and the tuna preferred a deep purple this day but also ate red-and-white. Had we picked up the pace, we might have snagged a wahoo or two. Again we ended our day searching for dolphin and did play with them at the transom some.

You may stumble into tuna any time in the Keys, but the season is often considered perhaps October through March. When the fish are concentrated and on the feed, artificials can really light them up. For lots of very good fishermen, the ace in the hole is a small trolling lure.

FS