Tuna Fishing - Sinking Stickbaits for Bluefin

When tuna are feeding near the surface, casting lures like sinking stickbaits can be highly effective. One of the main reasons to use a sinking stickbait is to avoid interference from birds like shearwaters.

As any tuna fisherman knows, when baitfish are driven to the surface and attacked, birds will inevitably show up. Some of these birds are large and aggressive enough to snatch your lure from the top three feet of the water column, which can disrupt your fishing. The solution? Use lures that sink.

Sinking stickbaits are an excellent addition to your fishing kit. Their weight allows for long-distance casting with exceptional accuracy, and also helps them sink quickly, out of reach of diving birds.

Our good friend Seth Hartwick, an experienced tuna fisherman, is here to share his knowledge on targeting big tuna. If there's a good tuna fishery open to recreational fishing anywhere in the world, Seth has fished it. He's well-versed in the power, capriciousness, and pickiness of bluefin tuna, making them a worthy opponent.

To capitalize on a bluefin tuna bite, you need a few sound techniques. Seth will cover the use of sinking stickbaits and how you can use them in your home waters. From Cape Cod to North Carolina, the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego and beyond, these lures are a must-have for catching bluefin tuna.

The benefit of sinking stickbaits is, well, they sink. But triggering a bluefin tuna bite involves more than just sinking your lure. Your lure needs to be the right size and color. The old adage "match the hatch" really comes into play with these fish. If your lure doesn't resemble what the tuna are feeding on, you may not get any bites. Bluefin tuna are very lure and line shy.

You'll learn why bluefin tuna lures in the 100-150 gram range work so well and how to rig them for a more optimal hook-up ratio. Bluefin are bigger fish, so your bluefin tuna hooks need to be up to the task. Seth will break down which tuna hooks he prefers and how to rig stickbaits with the hooks in the right orientation.

The key takeaway from this video is the importance of precision in all aspects of your fishing. Your lure presentations need to be as natural as possible. Your boat positioning should enable you to cast your lure in a way that the bluefin would naturally eat it. If anything is off, you won't get a bite.

Learn all these intricate details to become a more knowledgeable fisherman. Simple things like knowing when to cast to the school and how the birds are behaving can make all the difference.

Seth will also share which lures he finds most successful, what to look for in lure build quality, rods, reels, line, leader systems, must-have tools, and much more in this Sinking Stickbaits for Bluefin Tuna video.