This season is so far shaping up to be dominated by bluefin tuna, something we haven't seen for years. The past two season have shown the fleet large quantities of tuna that wouldn't bite very well. This year there may be even more of those prized chubby tuna. They've been hanging around at 240 miles or so for a couple of weeks. They're off and on, like always, but the Angler's catch Tuesday was the best so far and the first time a boat's been able to get on 'em three straight days.

There are seiners around, but they've been moving more than fishing. Scientist Ed Everett at IATTC measures sport-caught tuna at the docks and said the seiners so far have been catching small fish of 25 to 40 pounds for the pens and farms only. It's hard to believe they can feed it for two or three years and still turn a profit. There are three year classes of bluefin, with scattered albacore among them. A few fish to 97 pounds have come in recently. The albies are few so far. They're also fair-sized, mostly 20 to 30 pounds.

Water's still cool, about 64 or less up this way. In the BFT area it's almost a degree warmer, and the fish are on the north side of an edge, feeding on bait there, explained American Angler skipper Brian Kiyohara. The water's off-color but the fish don't seem to care. They're taking live sardines, stealthily fished, and some small mackerel.

Bluefin have been reported as far north as San Diego, but no one has made a notable catch to this point, until this morning, when Red Rooster II reported being on some fish, decking some, at one-day or day and a half range.

Shortfin don't respond well to trolled skirted jigs, so some boats aren't even pulling jigs as they look. More schools have been located at the surface than by electronic metering, but they're being found both ways. This morning on Let's Talk Hookup, Condor owner-operator Scott Meisel remarked that the sign he looks for is a good solid meter mark.

No guarantees, but it's likely the tuna schools will move northeast toward San Diego over the next two to four weeks. Hopefully, longfin will show in even greater numbers.