Over the course of a season, Northeast captains catch bluefin from the edge of the continental shelf 70-plus miles offshore to just off the beach, in clear view of surfcasters. They catch them by trolling, jigging, casting topwaters, and drifting live bait. By the time the last captain washes down the boat after his final trip of the year, nine months will have passed since the first captain broke the inlet on an initial exploratory trip of the season.
The tuna season is a long one between Maine and New Jersey, with the best approaches constantly evolving as the year progresses. To help break it down, I spoke to some of the most tuna-obsessed captains in the game to see how they stay on the fish from beginning to end.
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April and May: Finding the First One
For Captain Billy Hayes, self-proclaimed “tuna junkie” from New Jersey, April is less about striped bass and more about the race to be the first angler in the state to wrangle a bluefin.
“During late April and early May, most of our fish are feeding pretty close to the beach and they’re all giants, so a big bait is important,” said Hayes.
According to Hayes, bluefin eat just about anything they can find this time of year, whether it’s adult bunker, bluefish, or even large striped bass in the early stages of their own spring migration.
“Last year, we got our first fish on April 22 while fishing around the bunker pods,” said Hayes. “It’s the earliest I have ever caught one.”
If live bunker isn’t available, trolling ballyhoo is a productive approach to hooking the first bluefin of the season off New Jersey and western Long Island.
Like bunker, mackerel can also be a part of the early season forage base off New Jersey, but they won’t be pressed up along the beaches like bunker. “If you can find enough mackerel to use for bait, that’s like gold around here,” Hayes added. “We catch them on the wrecks and fill up the livewell.” That tends to happen around mid-May but, by then, he has his sights set on the soon-to-be developing jig bite.
As Hayes is dropping his first jigs to tuna off New Jersey, Captain Kevin Albohn of Blue Line Charters is chomping at the bit to catch his first bluefin of the year. Albohn keeps his finger on the pulse of the bluefin scene between Rhode Island and New York City as the end of April approaches. His season usually kicks off around the second week of May, when bluefin tuna make their first appearances on the inshore and midshore grounds off Long Island and Block Island.
“It’s ‘ghost hunting,’ mainly,” said Albohn, “but we’re out there looking because we all want to catch the first fish of the year in our respective regions.”
Ghost hunting south of Block Island consists of much more than just scanning the open ocean for a rogue bluefin. Albohn notes that a ghost hunt requires a tight-knit and trustworthy network of anglers, a fishing log, and a comprehensive understanding of fish movement relating to wind direction and water temperatures.
Tagging efforts by scientists like Dr. Jeff Kneebone of the Anderson Cabot Center for Marine Life indicate that giant bluefin show up off Block Island as early as mid- to late April. Albohn still aims for May 15 to start his tuna season, but he has come across bluefin even earlier.
“Last year, we hooked a giant on May 7 while we were fluke fishing near Block,” he said. “It’s fun to find tuna out there so early but, generally, I prefer to let them set up and establish themselves before we start to actively target them.”
Every spring is different, so Albohn recommends referencing fishing logs from years past because they will help develop patterns and provide insight into areas where bluefin may show. For example, one of his log entries from May 17, 2019, referenced a hot jig bite; so, on May 20, 2024, he ran south of Montauk toward the 35-fathom line and was greeted by nearly 100 whales—always a positive sign of bait and tuna in the area. While he didn’t catch a fish that day, he marked plenty. When Albohn returned to the grounds south of Montauk three days later, after letting the fish “set up,” his crew landed 14 bluefin tuna in a range of sizes.
“By May 26, we had consistent fish on the troll off Montauk and Rhode Island,” he said, “but there weren’t a ton of them. We were generally trolling over 150- to 180-foot depths, hoping to find a wolfpack of two to five 70-inch-class tuna, so it was hard to track them. That’s why we keep a log and stay in constant communication with our network.”
Albohn insists that water temperatures are also a primary factor during the first few weeks of the bluefin season in southern New England. “If we see warm water between 60 and 62 degrees off New Jersey or coming out of the Hudson Canyon, we’ll give it a shot,” he said. However, the skipper maintains that a healthy forage base is of utmost importance.
In May, when water temperatures reach the low 60s, those giant bluefin tend to cruise around on top pursuing mackerel, squid, sand eels, bunker, bluefish, and even striped bass. Much like the giant bluefin of late fall, these fish feed on just about anything they can inhale.
As water temperatures continue to climb throughout May, Albohn recommends paying close attention to the movements of the commercial fishing fleet. This is where having a good network of captains and fellow recreational anglers comes into play. “We’ll set up a trolling plan with a few other boats to cover large swaths of water and head out toward the temperature breaks, making huge loops while keeping an eye on the commercial boats,” he noted. Giant bluefin are clever enough to follow the draggers for easy meals, and by covering a vast area with a system of buddy boats, Albohn can better pinpoint where those bluefin are likely to feed.
Around this time in Massachusetts, Captain Alex Ridgway of Cape Cod Offshore is starting to get the tuna itch. By the end of May, Ridgway’s tuna season is underway. Like Albohn, he starts by exploring south of the islands and, depending on the year, east of Cape Cod, in search of bait. “Usually, the bait we find out east is sand eels, and when there are whales with them, we spend some time looking around,” said Ridgway. “We might mark one big fish or see a few giants break the surface in the distance, which, along with the presence of marine mammals, indicates that a bite could be forming.”
In New Jersey, smaller fish begin to head to the midshore grounds from the edge in May; according to Hayes, they are usually feeding on piles of sand eels. Last year, he began to venture further from shore around May 10 and, sure enough, whales and bait were there, with the tuna lagging not far behind. By early June, he and fellow New Jersey “tuna junkies” Jim and James Kuhl were catching midsize tuna on the midshore grounds on jigs, and occasionally on poppers.
June: Spread Out but Settling In
In early June, Albohn begins making runs to the canyons in search of a smaller class of fish. From Rhode Island to Montauk, squid make a strong showing each spring, so he makes it a point to stop and jig some up for the livewell before heading offshore. By the third week of June, bluefin under 50 inches move within a more reasonable range. “Those smaller bluefin are the last ones to come inshore, and when they do, we start to see a mixed range of sizes settle in close to home.”
It’s a similar story off Cape Cod. Come mid-June, with warmer water and an established forage base, Ridgway said bluefin of all sizes start piling in to feed, but the challenge is locating those feeding grounds.
“Every year we see different classes of bluefin early on,” he said. “A few years back, it was all 40-inch-class fish off the Cape and now it’s all 60s.”
It’s possible that those are the same fish that have since matured and grown, but according to Ridgway, 40-inchers east of Cape has been a rarer occurrence in recent seasons. “South of the islands, we see some of those smaller, sub-40-inch fish, but we almost never run into them east or northeast of the Cape.”
When the sand eels settle in east of Cape Cod in June, they don’t move around much. The feeds can be incredible because the fish stay on the surface. When that happens, Ridgway cruises toward the melee at just over 5 knots. Keeping a low RPM allows his crew to get off a few good casts without spooking the fish.
He has at least six spinning rods rigged and ready with a variety of offerings to decipher what those eel-gorging tuna are most likely to respond to. Some of his most productive lures are olive-colored, tuna-grade epoxy-style jigs, natural-colored Hogy Pro Tails, slider-style stickbaits, and the Siren Antidote 130 in the sand-eel pattern. If the fish are staying up, as they tend to do when feeding on sand eels, Ridgway says they’ll cast poppers, too, but only if they’ve already caught at least one fish. When surface feeds subside, he arms his crews with jigging rods rigged with RonZs.
Around late June, Ridgway’s search for Cape Cod bluefin expands. The fish, which are still migrating through the end of the month, spread out as more forage, like large schools of Atlantic mackerel, become available.
Off Rhode Island, Albohn focuses more on the troll than on jigging and popping in the early part of June. “Once the little fish settle in and surface temperatures warm up, they sit at the thermocline and we can get them more reliably,” he said. “We’ll be marking them high enough that you can raise them by trolling, and sometimes with poppers because they’re within 50 to 100 feet of the surface.” However, Albohn likes to let the June full moon pass before whipping out the jigs and poppers. “There’s a lot of fish movement around the June full moon; after that, bluefin tend to come in closer to Block and that’s when the jig bite will begin,” he said.
Down in Jersey, once the June full moon passes, Billy Hayes starts to find yellowfin tuna mixing in with bluefin and porpoises. By then, he can reliably jig and pop from the inshore to midshore grounds through July and August, and even into September. There are exceptions to the jig-and-pop bite, though. In recent years, bluefin have been coming inshore to places like Monster Ledge to fuel up on squid before they begin migrating back toward the canyons in search of favorable water conditions and, of course, more food.
July: Watching the Wind for Summer Patterns
With summer comes warmer weather, settled seas, and a vast expansion of the areas and depths where bluefin may be feeding. To pinpoint the most probable productive areas, Ridgway recommends doing daily research. “We’re constantly looking at temperature and chlorophyll charts in an effort to judge where the fish might be,” he said. “Maybe they’ll line up on the temperature breaks or they might be where there’s clean water and an abundance of bait.”
Last year, Ridgway found bluefin feeding on schools of mackerel northeast of Cape Cod in the summer, while during the same week in 2023, the fish were on sand eels south and east of Nantucket. The tuna are constantly moving, but by July and August, he is usually able to develop week-to-week patterns—as long as sea and weather conditions remain relatively stable. A few days of sustained onshore winds out of the east or southeast can choke up the water with seaweed, sending smaller, recreational-class tuna packing.
By early July, the jig-and-pop bite is on in Rhode Island, and larger, more concentrated schools become easier to locate. “At that point, we’re seeing fish in the mid-30- to 65-inch class,” Albohn said. “We approach the bigger fish by ‘fluke jigging,’ slowly working something like a RonZ near the bottom.” At the same time, he noted that smaller fish in the mid-30- to 40-inch class can be caught speed jigging.
August: Adjusting to Fishing Pressure
In August, clean water and a rich forage base are of utmost importance if the bluefin are to stick around. “We don’t really see bluefin leave the area from Montauk to Block Island; instead, they become mixed in with the yellowfin,” said Albohn. Unlike yellowfin tuna, bluefin have a higher tolerance for dirty or cool water. If there is a food source, they will stay with it, and that holds true for the late season bite off New York City as well. “Come late August, when there are a lot of yellows in warm water, the bluefin thin out and head toward Cape Cod, as far east as Chatham, then they make their way back toward the Dump. One strong northeast blow is all it takes to bring them back.”
During late August and early September, fishing pressure is at its peak, so continuing to produce results requires some creativity. Albohn recommends using a clear popper or stickbait to give the illusion of a school of small baitfish. He says it works wonders when even the yellowfin grow finicky. “You can pull a 60-inch-plus bluefin from beneath those yellows,” he said. “Getting the bite requires using a 20-foot length of 60- to 80-pound-test leader. In my opinion, it’s better to go long and heavy than light and short.” Albohn suggests using electronics to see what the fish are doing, what they are or are not responding to, then making an educated guess as to what they’re going to eat.
September and October: Baitfish Buffet
Albohn insists that September is the best month to be a bluefin tuna fisherman and a guide. Bluefin can be caught on chunks, jigs, poppers and, best of all, September usually brings good sea and weather conditions to Rhode Island. “September is great. Giants start showing up again in decent numbers so we don’t have to troll anymore. I’d rather be jigging, especially with clients, because anyone can do it. I can mark a few tuna, tell a new tuna fisherman to drop a jig to 90 feet and, boom, he’s on. For me, as a captain, there’s nothing better.”
Early fall on Cape Cod tends to be an extension of the summer bluefin patterns. There are almost always sand eels, but in late September, as more and different baitfish arrive, the bite will change.
Ridgway referred to fall 2024 as the year of the halfbeak (Atlantic saury), while two years earlier, it was a butterfish bonanza. “This past season, we had halfbeaks everywhere. From late September into early October, we found them south of the islands by the windmills. They were spread up and down the back side of the Cape to the south end of Stellwagen Bank and into lower Cape Cod Bay, and as far west as the Cape Cod Canal, where tuna were feeding in as little as 50 to 60 feet of water,” he said. “There were almost too many halfbeaks to keep the tuna in one area, so it was difficult to develop a pattern from day to day.”
Halfbeaks are fast-moving fish, but they are tuna candy. “We can mark clouds of sand eels and the tuna will still be up on top chasing a smaller school of ‘beaks,” Ridgway said. While halfbeak surface feeds are a spectacle to behold, properly presenting a lure to saury-slaying tunas can be a challenge. “You need to gauge which direction they’re being chased and get ahead of the school, which is difficult to do at a low RPM. The most important part of fishing around halfbeaks is to have your lure going in the same direction they are moving and to fish the edges of the school.” Ideally, your lure will stand out as a straggler—a vulnerable fish that lost its way in the mayhem of the chase, and that’s when the strike will come.
In the fall, Ridgway keeps an array of lures on board that closely resemble the color and profile of sauries. The Siren Sorry Charlie or Deep Seductress 155 and 4-ounce, 6-inch tuna-grade epoxy jigs in blue, silver, and purple are mainstays on halfbeak years, but that changes when butterfish are the predominant baitfish.
A steady northeast wind in September usually pushes butterfish in from offshore. “They come in with the weeds, so it’s a blessing and a curse,” Ridgway chuckled. When butterfish show up in Albohn’s home waters during the fall, it can ignite the chunk bite, but Ridgway maintains an artificial approach on the Cape. “When the butters are in, we reach for small stickbaits, 5½-inch Hogy Pro Tails, larger JoeBaggs Peanut Resin jigs, and the Hogy Slider.” Unlike sauries, butterfish are deep-bodied and slow-moving, so it’s easier to stay on the bite for a few days, assuming conditions remain stable and shifting winds don’t push them out.
November: Butterballs in the New York Bight
The Cape Cod tuna season starts to wind down by late October/early November, although giants hang around well into December. Typically, the smaller, recreational-class fish have mainly moved on when the calendar hits November.
“In 2023, there was a good pogy/bunker bite with mixed-size classes of tuna south of Martha’s Vineyard in late October, and after that, we were done,” Ridgway noted. “Yet, the year before, we had bluefin feeding on butterfish through Thanksgiving. You never really know when it’s going to end, so we just use the information we gather through research and our network of five or six buddy boats.”
As bluefin depart New England waters, anglers in Long Island and New Jersey still have what’s become the best bite of the year to look forward to.
“The tail end of our tuna season starts in November when the bunker are moving through, so the fishing is just insane,” said Hayes. It’s his favorite time to be a bluefin tuna fisherman.
“Fish are everywhere you look, and in multiple sizes,” Hayes continued. “We’ll be casting into feeds full of 60-inch-class fish, only to have giants pop up a second later.” Hayes, who relishes the opportunity to tangle with a giant bluefin on spinning gear, enjoys the game of bluefin roulette.
Trolling ballyhoo is still an option, as is fishing with live bunker, but Hayes’ preferred approach doesn’t waver from the spring. “We strictly cast lures, like 8-inch straight tails from No Live Bait Needed, into active feeds.” The larger profile is a good match for the mature bunker the bluefin are feeding on, and it’s not far off from the slender profile of adult sand eels, which tend to appear around the same time as the menhaden. Hayes focuses on making well-timed, accurate casts with a lure large enough that it won’t go unnoticed when presented properly.
December: Final Crew Calls
By mid-November, the fish are feeding in shallow water within sight of sand and will continue to do so into December. Recreational-sized fish will continue their journey, following the bunker pods down the New Jersey coast, and Hayes will follow them as far south as the Atlantic City Reef until mid-December. “If the fish are sticking around, we’ll stay in the water until just before Christmas to catch the tail end of the biomass,” Hayes said.
Albohn, who shifts his home port to western Long Island in the late fall, does the same—as long as he has a willing crew. “Even if the fish are there, the hardest part about tuna fishing in December is getting enough guys to go,” he said. A few years back, he caught tuna the day before Christmas Eve just outside New York City. “It was cold as hell and snowed three inches, but we had tuna feeds all day.”
And so ends the May-December relationship with bluefin tuna in the Northeast. After that, captains have four months to service tackle, respool reels, restock lures, and prep for another year of bluefin tuna fishing.
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