It’s been a fast and early start to the gamefish season off New Zealand’s east coast. While the tuna talk revolved around northern bluefin tuna in September, it has now shifted to yellowfin as regular catches are coming in from North Cape down to Whakatane. 

The Fishing Website’s Northland area reporter, Jordan Hensen, got wind of the yellowfin chat and headed out trolling with friends on November 27. After hearing reports of yellowfin tuna being sporadically taken across the east coast of Northland and watching an eddy of water making its way down the coast, a last-minute plan was devised to make a strike mission the following day.

Setting the lures in around 330m off Cape Brett, we came across a patch of birds and dolphins – no sooner had we seen these than we had a triple on. First up on the rods we had myself, Reece Wedge, and Jessie Lawrie with Aidan Williams delegating himself to skipper, leader-man, and gaff-man. After a short fight, we boated three yellowfin in the mid-30 kg range. We were ecstatic – we couldn't believe what had just happened.

After a quick lot of photos and getting the fish on ice, the gear was reset and we lined ourselves up for another pass of the area that we just pulled the previous fish from – within minutes we were on another triple. This one turned out to be one large skippy and two more yellowfin tuna.

Again, we repeated the process, this time I wasn't even able to get the first two lures out without both of them being taken out of my hands. Boom, we were on a double. At this point we made the decision to put bigger lures out and drive away from the pack to target what calls tuna food (a large blue marlin), but within minutes we were back onto a further double of yellowfin.

We decided it was probably best to make our way home, call it a day, and enjoy a couple of cold beers. Our final stats were 9 fish from 11 bites – all before 11am. With a few boated and few released, we were a very happy crew. The biggest of the lot was around 45kg with most of them being around 35kg.

The yellowfin have been making waves further south, too, with some solid models taken on trolled and topwater lures in the Bay of Plenty over the last few days. Intel from commercial longliners indicates the yellowfin and striped marlin have been hanging around since early/mid-spring off Northland’s east coast.

A recreationally caught striped marlin was taken off the King Bank by one of the Three Kings charter fleet on November 11, and more have been caught out from the Bay of Islands, Whangaroa, and Tutukaka recently. Shortbill spearfish and mahimahi have also been accounted for before the official Kiwi summer even began, indicating that Kiwis should be in for a bumper gamefishing season in 2024/25.