Jigging outfit for YFT?

hey guys while i dont have the experience that kil has as far as jigging tuna goes, I have learned a few things along the way from kil as well as from my own jigging experience here on the east coast.

My personal settup which has allowed me to land yellows upt to 75 lbs in less than 2 minutes and bluefin up to about 150-175 in under 10 minutes is a tricked out trinidad 40 or 50 with 80lb tufline and a 100 meter topshot of deep one japanese jigging line along with a 10-15ft leader of 80lb flouro. The rod i use ia a 8ft 3 inch custom rod. I took a calstar 900M and cut 9 inches off the tip of it. It give me a very nice parabolic action while being extremely light. The length as kil says give me the ability to keep the fish away from the boat, as well as cast the jig further.

I have used rods as short as 6.6 feet for jigging tuna but i find especially with the up and down jigging motion that is used (yoyoing) on the east coast the longer rod makes for a lot easier jigging, and covers the most depth. the Japanese jigging style however is much more difficult with the longer rods from my personal experience.

I have caught a few tuna using the japanese styleof jigging but many more on just a simple up and down motion or squidding (reeling in slow or fast). However i utilized the up and down much more therefore that will account for the skewed data.

For the most part my fishing style consists of fishing very hard drag from the start and muscling the fish in. I can put the rod on the rail and either straight wind it or use the rail while using my weight to pump the rod slightly to gain line.

One more advantage i noticed with the longer rod is when sometimes mistakenly people try to set the hook my raising the rod rather than reeling tight and allowing the fish to set the hook, is that it gives you a little more room for error as when you lift the rod on the longer rod you take much more slack out than a shorter rod.

Hope this helps guys

"a longer rod that was rated for say a 300 gram jigs would be just as short when it was bowed up under drag....rick"

depends on what kinda rod your using. some of the extremely slow japanese rods which dont even usually com ein lengths over 6 ft bend all the way to the reel, where as a lot of the rods used here in the north east, calstar 700 xh , h, gusa wahoo, etc. shut off at a certain point and you really do get to keep the fish a lot further away from the hull of boats. especially when the fish charges directly under the boat.

As far as why we like longers rods for casting. We like to cast away from the boat to work a lot of different amounts of water, and depending on which way the current is running to keep the jig from going under the boat. We typically anchor and chum chunks and while the bait fishermen chunk jig up towards the bow. I like to cast uptide and jig yo yo style working my way back to the boat and doing the process over and over

Ok Kil, now I'm really gonna pick your brain. I agree on the drag/fight time and am not opposed to a long rod to jig w/ per se, just didn't want to buy any longer than is necessary.

I've seen you write about casting being a big part of your jigging. What does that entail. I've casted Tady style jigs to tuna (both heavies and surface iron), but are you casting japanese style jig? What's the technique?

For some unknown reason, I have more bites when I jig under the boat than when my jigs drift away. To maintain my light jigs more in 90 degree in current, the best way is to cast upcurrent.
Of course, casting away from others' lines helps not to tangle with other lines.
By casting far away from the boat, you can cover in differnt depth.
Sometimes we have tuna close to top early in the morning and I had pretty good success by casting away.

It is a challenge to catch yellowfin tuna among so many blackfin in Gulf Coast. The first thing I want to try when I go down there is the casting method. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out where you fish when most yellowin usually stay on top and blackfin are thick in deep at oil rigs. When tuna are on top they usually stay outskirt of lights of a boat and you need to cast to reach them.

Our tuna jigging fishermen on the East Coast are heavily influenced by cod jigging which has been done for generations. Casting is always an important part of cod jigging and I've never seen a good cod jig fishermen who can not cast. The most popular length of cod jigging rod is 8' on party boats.

Most of my tuna jigging rods ( I use them for cod jigging too) are 8'. I experimented a 6'6" Japanese rod and Calstar 700H/700XH purposely this year. I found that the shorter rods are more convenient when I fish on a small private boats, but I still prefer the 8' rods when fishing on a big party boat. As I said before, you can fight with long 8' rod effectively when using the rail. However, you have more advantage of using shorter rods if you want to fight on harness. You can fight a 8' or longer rod on harness whether it is a spinning rod or conventional rod, but there is a trememdous difference using 6' rod and 8' rod when using a harness.

I see many Gulf Coast fishermen got to know Japanese style jigging systems and use them. But I foresee they will recognize the merit of long jigging rod eventually. We need both depending on fishing situations.