BY MERIT McCRAE
SANTA CATALINA ISLAND – A monster bluefin tuna weighed in at 650 pounds at Catalina Island Saturday. Gary Adams and the crew of the Rail Time boated the big bluefin. After a night sitting iced on deck the fish scaled at a monstrous 650 pounds.
Bluefin of that size and larger aren’t new to our waters but boating one rod-and-reel is. Back in 1988 schools of bluefin weighing from 400, to just over 1,000 pounds showed up just south of the Northern Channel Islands and were caught by purse seiners.
Weighed in at the Avalon Seafood IGFA station, this fish bests the 500 pounder boated by Markus Medak aboard the Shearwater, earlier this year.
Scientific information on Pacific bluefin tuna has it that these fish first arrive off our coast as 1-year-olds, feed in our waters for 2 to 4 years before returning to waters off Japan where they remain as adults. That would mean bluefin here would top out at 300 pounds or so.
Having larger ones here indicates fish old enough to have returned to their West Pacific spawning areas also occasionally re-cross half-a-world of ocean to feed in our local waters.
