Key West Tuna Fishing
Key West Tuna Fishing
Fishing Key West for Tuna is always a crowd pleaser, and with many different varieties of Tuna there is enough to keep the Key West Fishing Charters captains busy year round. In Florida and the Bahamas, there are a multitude of tuna varieties. The most common varieties in ascending order from smallest to largest are: little tunny, skipjack tuna, blackfin tuna, and yellowfin tuna. The more rare varieties are the Atlantic bonito, and the near impossible to find Albacore, bigeye tuna, the giant bluefin tuna. Of all the listed varieties of tuna, Black Fin Tuna are the ones most Key West fishing charters go after.
The most common method of fishing for black fin tuna would be trolling live bait, but other methods are used also. One other method would be jigging over one of the deep water wrecks that are south of Key West. This can be a very productive method of tuna fishing in Key West. Fishing for Tuna behind shrimp boats is also very popular because the Tuna follow the schools of shrimp. This is very seasonal and often requires long, tiring runs in the gulf. The shrimp boats dump their by catch of small fish, crabs etc that are caught and killed while netting shrimp over the side and larger fish such as tuna come in to get the free meal. This will produce an abundance of great Tuna Fishing in Key West as long as your captain has the patience and you are willing to make the long runs out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Tuna are known as the bullet of the sea, and with great reason. If you have ever filleted a tuna fish, then you know they are solid muscle. The tuna is a streamlined swimming machine that pound for pound may be the strongest of any of the fish normally sought after by Key West Fishing Charters. According to the Florida Sportsman, and we quote, "It's pretty safe to say that tunas are the strongest and most determined brawlers in all of fishdom. Even billfishes, their closest challengers, don't quite match them in pound-for-pound pulling power, simply because those long-nosed showboats waste too much of their energy jumping and thrashing".
If tuna fishing is not what you're into, you may want to look into one of the most popular fishing charters. Tarpon Fishing Key West can be fun and exhilarating, and annually produces the happiest customers based on our user reviews.