Seaway and Inshore Report Sunday 20th February 2012

Into the seaway at 2am we tried fishing for tarpon, no joy on that, in fact nothing whatsoever in the seaway, not a hit or a nudge even at dawn. We tried plastics, metals, popper and minnows in many locations. There's a lack of bait in the seaway at the moment which may be the cause of the problem, there's plenty offshore so we just have to wait until some it makes its way into the seaway.

Disappointed with that we headed offshore as the sun rose and started looking for tuna. We found some just off surfers but the birds were that thick we couldn't get a cast into them without hooking a bird. They went down soon after anyway. We found some more schools inshore from mermaid and I landed 1 mack tuna just over a kilo. Moved around a bit more and found some more fish and after a spirited fight landed a yellowfin tuna around 3 kilos. Been a few years since I've caught a yellowfin and they do not disappoint in the fighting stakes. Chased more schools around unsuccessfully and headed back to the seaway, bby the time we got up there the wind had increased to an uncomfortable 15 knots and it was rough going in my 4.1 poly. We found some bigger schools of striped tuna and landed a couple around the 3 kilo mark, and at that size they go hard. One of them broke the ticker on my drag(bloody shimano's) he took off so fast. We chased them around for a bit longer but they had gone into fussy mode. All in all we landed 5 fish for the day, 1 mackt, 1 yellowfin, 2 striped tuna and 1 whiting I got on a plastic over one of the reefs.

There's plenty of tuna out there now and numbers should increase until the end of march so if you want a tuna and can get out there, get out there on the first good day you can and head south. They were very flighty but with persistance you can get one to hit a slug.