Venice, Louisiana is a well-known yellowfin tuna fishing hotspot. A group of anglers set out of Venice Marina on Mar. 7 for a day of offshore action chasing tuna with a seasoned charter captain. Capt. Matt Moranda, of Metairie, La., runs the 42-foot Freeman boat Wild Bill for The Mexican Gulf Fishing Company, and he has a knack for finding big tuna — including the Gulf record yellowfin tunaa.
Find the Bait, Find the Fish
“We headed out that morning and ran about 18 miles offshore where pods of menhaden were being hammered by tuna,” Moranda, age 34, tells Wired2Fish. The anglers ran from bait pod to bait pod, casting plugs to schools of menhaden using heavy spinning tackle, 100-pound test braided line and large surface plugs to tempt tuna to strike.
“There are oil rigs around, but the bait and tuna were off the rigs in about 200-feet of water,” recounts Moranda, a full-time tuna captain of 9 years.
Yellowfin tuna are fast, huge and are renowned as one of the strongest fish on the planet. Their ferocious strike at a cast plug is legendary in the marine angling world.
“The surface strike by a giant tuna on a cast plug using braided fishing line is so vicious that it violently jolts your arms, shoulders, back and legs – and nearly cracks your toenails,” said an old-timer that hangs out Capt. Moranda with plenty of tuna catches under his belt after a lifetime on the seas.
Fish On!
About 8 a.m. that morning on the Wild Bill, angler Jason Streeval cast a white 3.3-ounce Daiwa Saltiga “Cuddler” plug to a bait pod. He was using a Daiwa rod and spinning reel spooled with 100-pound-test Seaguar braided line with a 150-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader.
A high-speed tuna crushed his lure, and the fight was on.
Streeval said the tuna was so strong he couldn’t move the fish. He couldn’t reel the handle even once, said Streeval, who is a Pennsylvania prison warden. Streeval struggled with the tuna for 10 minutes while the fish smoked 400 yards of line off the reel.
Streeval got so tired fighting the fish that he passed the rod and reel to another angler on the boat, who fought the fish for time before passing the tackle to a third angler.
The three fishermen battled the tuna for over an hour, passing the rod among them to ease their fatigue. Finally, they muscled the fish close to their Freeman boat, where Moranda and his deck hand Matt Carrin put two gaffs in the yellowfin. One of the anglers helped with the gaffs, and a video of them boating the fish shows it was all they could do to haul the massive tuna aboard.
Would-Be Record Gulf Yellowfin
Back at Venice Marine, the tuna weighed 265-pounds with a length of 71 inches and a 56-inch girth.
Because three anglers battled the brute of a tuna, it’s not eligible for IGFA record certification; only one angler may fight a fish for IGFA consideration. But the 265-pounder is the largest yellowfin tuna ever caught in the Gulf of America.
Interestingly, this fish tops the previous Gulf record yellowfin weighing 258 pounds, which was also caught by three anglers fishing off Venice with Moranda in 2019.
“We caught that 258-pounder behind a shrimp boat, and the fish just whipped those three guys who fought it, too,” says Moranda. “The big tuna show off Louisiana in November, and stay around until spring.
“We catch blackfin tuna, wahoo and some other species, but yellowfins, man they are something special and tough.”
