Our Longtail Tuna season on the Sunshine Coast is finally here, and we cannot wait to get stuck in. During March, our inshore waters literally boil with schools of busting Longtail Tuna. Early mornings, late afternoons and even during the day, it doesn’t really matter. With the amount of bait that has been around the last few months, we anticipate this March – April to be a special one!
Early season fish can range from 10 to 25kg however these big bruisers are very hard to target as they normally pop up and feed, go down again and then pop up a million miles from where you last saw them. However, sometimes we get lucky and we have a lure or a bait in the right spot at the right time and nail a proper one. For majority of the time these little bullets are around, they average from 5-15kg in size and are usually willing to hit a pretty wide range of easy casting lures. We find the twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch…….. and so on technique works the best. The fast wind does work also but this usually entices the less desirable Mac Tuna to the party. Double digit fish days for each angler is not uncommon and is definitely one factor that keeps us itching for these 2 months of the year to roll around again.
Our Longtails here are one of our premier sport fish and pound for pound will go harder than most fish found in our area. We practice catch and release on most of our Tunas while still taking the right fish if it presents itself, for example, a fish that is bleeding or a fish with beautiful shape and obvious fat around the belly. Tuna in our opinion should only be eaten fresh so taking excess will never do the fish justice as most would just go to waste or turn into bait.
We look forward to seeing you for an inshore sports fishing trip in Noosa this season!
