Tips for maximizing success on your next vertical jigging trip to the tuna grounds.
Trolling, popping, live baiting, chumming and chunking, all have been the go-to method at one point or another of targeting Northeast yellowfin and bluefin, each stirring a prolific tackle rush on regional shops and manufacturers to accommodate the high demand for the “Flavor of the Week.” But of all the techniques that have been favored the past few seasons, Vertical Jigging has by far been the most consistent.
Whether you’re speed jigging, traditional butterfly jigging, dead-stick dropping a weighted soft plastic like a RonZ, or even slow-pitch jigging; knowing when to drop can have a significant influence on your success rate. Over the years while sharing my experience with others, I’ve often referred to vertical jigging as a form of sight fishing, only instead of looking over a shallow flat with a sharp pair of polarized lenses, you’re using your fishfinder to get a better view of what’s going on below.
The key to targeting tuna effectively while using sonar starts with boat handling and positioning. This is important to understand because once you see that beautiful deep red arch on the screen it means that fish has already come and gone. If the fish were just sitting under the boat, it would appear as a steady red line. As an example, take your jig and drop it down about 30 feet on the down drift side so that it sweeps under the boat into the conical beam of the sonar. When you see that steady line of the jig lift on the rod and then drop it, watch in real time how an active object reads to the far right of the screen. Everything ticking off to the left has come and gone and no longer directly under the boat.
This doesn’t mean that you can drop a jig after seeing a mark move past and get tight as in many cases these fish are pushing around on the bottom and stirring up the bait in spaced out packs, like underwater wolves, but you may happen to catch the attention of another fish approaching or just outside of the beam. While this does happen often, it’s not as strategic or effective and more so dependent on a portion of luck.
Six Tips For Success
- Once locating the life – whales, dolphins, birds, slicks, or whatever the flotilla is likely hovering over, take your vessel out of gear and note the angle of drift.
- Next, approach the life from the down drift direction and make small course corrections port and starboard, sweeping the bottom with your sonar like a broom. Watch out for the guy trolling 10 bars off your port and even more so for the boat to your starboard that’s down and dirty on a “real one.” Simple rule here that’s best not to forget – whoever is tight has the right. The point I’m making is don’t get lost in your screen like a teen wondering the mall; use your sonar but don’t forget to stay alert.
- Once you see a mark or two, don’t just stop and jig, continue to push further updrift until the life stops. Then position your vessel so that the side you wish to jig is facing updrift. Have your set ups and jigs ready and watch the screen.
- If planning to dead-stick a plastic its okay to drop now but stay close to the rod; these jigs will typically be down near the bottom, so if you start to mark fish above your jig you can now quickly reel up to its depth or just above it and give it a moderate action and expect a strike.
- When working metal, it’s hand on the bail and wait. As soon as life starts appear on screen I like to have two rods at the ready, one will drop into the “meat” and start to jig blind.
- If possible the other jig is heavy enough to drop quickly strait to the bottom, I let the life pass by on the screen and wait for that upward curving telltale start of a tuna mark. The second that mark shows on the screen deploy your jig straight to the bottom and aggressively work it to about 10 feet or so above the fish’s depth. Ideally one of those lifts will be rudely interrupted with an abrupt halt.
Another useful consideration for making adjustments on the fly for this style of fishing is by investing in metered braid like PowerPro Depth Hunter. This line changes color every 25 feet, and has a 2-inch dark marker at every 5 feet for incremental adjustment of lure depth even when you can’t see the jig on the screen. Just be sure to compensate for the length of your leader.
