Yellowfin Tuna fishing guide.

Where the Yellowfin Tuna bite is on right now

Hero spots in our coverage where Yellowfin Tuna is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.

Best bait

• Live skipjack tuna ("striped tuna") on a circle hook — the trophy bait
• Slimy mackerel chunks in a berley trail
• Whole pilchards on a snell
• Live yakka slow-trolled
• Cube-cut pilchard berley + matched cube hook bait

Best lures

• Skirted trolling lures 7–12" (Pakula Lumo, Black Bart, Halco Skirts) in lumo green, pink/blue, purple/black
• Stickbaits 180–220 mm cast at busting fish (Hammerhead I-Witness 220, Nomad Madscad 200)
• Small chrome metal slugs 80–150 g (Raider, Halco Twisty) for school-size fish
• Yo-yo speed jigs 200–400 g over deep underwater pinnacles
• Skip-baits — rigged ballyhoo / garfish behind a small skirt

Technique

Australia: troll the continental shelf line and current edges at 6–8 knots from October to June. Look for bird workups, surface boils, and temperature breaks (the SST gradient layer on the live map). For trophy fish, anchor up on a known shelf-line FAD or current line and cube-berley with chopped pilchard. Smaller "school" fish in the 8–20 kg class can be caught casting metals into surface boils. Florida / Hawaii: trolling chuggers and skirts behind teasers is the method — naked ballyhoo skipped on the surface is deadly.

Tide windows that matter

Tide is irrelevant offshore — current and temperature gradient matter. Where the offshore current pushes against the EAC or another current, the convergence line concentrates bait and tuna. Fish the windward edge of any temperature break.

Moon & solunar

Yellowfin are weakly moon-dependent but trophy 80 kg+ fish are statistically over-represented in the few days either side of the full moon (likely due to plankton / squid behaviour rather than the moon itself). Dawn is universally the best feeding window.

Regulations

AU (federal HMS): no minimum size in most states, bag of 3 per person. US Atlantic: 27" curved fork length, 3 per day. US Pacific: 27" CFL, no daily limit but federal HMS rules apply. Always verify NOAA HMS / AFMA regulations.