Unlike the East Coast, Gulf Coast fishermen seldom jig for tuna until recently and adopted Japanese style jigging wholeheartedly.
There are many advantages of using short Japanese style rod and jigging techniques, but there are some advantages of using long rod for tuna jigging.
One of the obvious advantages of long rods over short rods is that you can cast far and work the area away from the boat.
Tuna pass by or stay under the boat deep, but they tend to stay away from the lights of the boat, especially when they stay near the surface.
To get those tuna, you got to cast far.
On the Sun/Mon Jamaica trip I had two yft by casting far. When I cast, I let the jig sink about 50 ft, lock the reel and start jigging.
I apply two different jigging methods when casting. One is to jig slowy up and down and the other method I use is to reel fast by jerking as Japanese jig fishermen do.
Between two tuna I got on the trip with cast, the first tuna took the jig while I cast,let the jig drop and started to jig slowly up and down.
The second tuna took my jig when I let the jig drop after casting.
When you drop your jigs and tuna takes it, two different things happen. One is you get slack line as jig stops. You got to crank as fast as you can when it happens. And sometimes your line goes faster than normal when tuna take your jigs while descending. That is what happend on my second tuna. As soon as I felt my line went down faster than normal, I locked the reel and tuna was on !
Try the casting technique with longer rods, your catching ratio will increase substantially.
There are many advantages of using short Japanese style rod and jigging techniques, but there are some advantages of using long rod for tuna jigging.
One of the obvious advantages of long rods over short rods is that you can cast far and work the area away from the boat.
Tuna pass by or stay under the boat deep, but they tend to stay away from the lights of the boat, especially when they stay near the surface.
To get those tuna, you got to cast far.
On the Sun/Mon Jamaica trip I had two yft by casting far. When I cast, I let the jig sink about 50 ft, lock the reel and start jigging.
I apply two different jigging methods when casting. One is to jig slowy up and down and the other method I use is to reel fast by jerking as Japanese jig fishermen do.
Between two tuna I got on the trip with cast, the first tuna took the jig while I cast,let the jig drop and started to jig slowly up and down.
The second tuna took my jig when I let the jig drop after casting.
When you drop your jigs and tuna takes it, two different things happen. One is you get slack line as jig stops. You got to crank as fast as you can when it happens. And sometimes your line goes faster than normal when tuna take your jigs while descending. That is what happend on my second tuna. As soon as I felt my line went down faster than normal, I locked the reel and tuna was on !
Try the casting technique with longer rods, your catching ratio will increase substantially.