The worlds best place to catch big Southern Bluefin Tuna is the Bay Of Plenty with Waihau Bay being the prime location. The best action is from June to August. Pacific Bluefin are also there at that time and whilst in lower numbers they make a fantastic catch if you’re lucky enough to get one. The Bluefin arrive mid to late May and fishing for them really fires up in June, July and August. We absolutely love fishing for these beauties as they are an amazing site, hunt in packs, taste fantastic and put up some awesome scraps. The early season Bluefin are often huge but massive ones can also show up at anytime.

We base our boats in Waihau Bay during this time to give our customers the best Southern Bluefin Tuna fishing in the world. We troll, jig, live bait and fish dead baits for the Bluefin. We have been the top New Zealand Bluefin Tuna charter company over 2023 and 2024 with catches of over 5 bluefin in a day common, over 10 in day reasonably common and we even caught over 30 some days. Both the trolling and night time jigging can be incredible and catching these monstrous fish on jigs just takes everything to another level.
We also operate out of Tauranga, Whitianga and Whangamata when the time and circumstances are right.

Jigging for Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT):

We caught the first Bluefin Tuna on a jig in 2021. It was at night and it was the first documented Bluefin Tuna on a jig in New Zealand.
It put up a great tussle and there were plenty of spirited yahoo’s when that came aboard. In 2024 we really mastered the art of catching Bluefin jigging at night and getting into the over 10 Bluefin night jigging is now common. They fight extremely hard of course and put the gear through the ultimate test. Our quality Shimano equipment is up to the job. To get an idea of what these are like to catch just think about the fight of a 30kg Kingfish or Giant Trevally (GT) then multiply it by 5 as it is possible to hook into a monster 150kg SBT or even bigger at night.

Trolling for Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT):

This has proven to be the best daytime method for catching SBT’s. We usually troll up to 6 lures at once. That means there’s times when we hook 6 Bluefin up at once. The Southern Bluefin Tuna bite hard so the hook-ups are spectacular and generally pretty good which means a pandemonium of action, movement and screaming reels when a six way is on. Amazingly we have been very successful in landing all six from a six way which again means joyful yelling to the heavens for everyone. There’s nothing we like more than elated and successful customers.