‘Hard to Top This One.’ Fishermen Are Catching Bluefin Tuna Yards from the Beach in the Outer Banks

Up to date April 9, 2025: The Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has shut down bluefin tuna fishing at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina. A pier spokesperson confirmed to Outside Life {that a} NOAA officer visited Jennette’s Tuesday morning. This was after a number of native anglers had hooked or caught bluefins there, each from the pier and from their private kayaks, over the weekend. The officer suggested pier administration that prospects couldn’t legally fish for bluefin tuna below federal regulation. 

“We have been suggested to take away all references to the bluefin chunk from our social media platforms as a result of it’s thought of selling an criminality,” Jennette’s Pier introduced in a Facebook post. 

Present Atlantic bluefin tuna laws apply to fishing actions performed from vessels. There isn’t any particular federal regulation that particularly limits the touchdown of bluefin tuna from shore, as a result of the species is often caught properly offshore. Nevertheless, all anglers should adjust to federal laws that govern touchdown and retention limits for bluefin, and they’re required to have the correct licenses, whether or not the fish are hooked miles or mere yards from the seashore.

In keeping with NOAA’s Code of Federal Regulations: “It’s illegal for any particular person or vessel topic to the jurisdiction of the US to fish for, catch, possess, retain, land, or promote Atlantic extremely migratory species with out the suitable legitimate vessel allow with the suitable endorsements.”

April 7, 2025 8:03PM EDT: Fishing is often sizzling on Jennette’s Pier this time of yr, with anglers hooking loads of croaker, bluefish, and sizable pink drum. However touchdown deep-sea fish like bluefin tuna there’s extraordinary. Bluefin don’t sometimes present up 1,000 ft from the sand. However somebody apparently forgot to inform the fish that.

For greater than every week now, anglers fishing from Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina, have been hooking sizable bluefin tuna proper off the top of the pier — an unprecedented streak that has surprised locals and lit up the Outer Banks fishing neighborhood. 

Seeing them virtually inside casting distance of the seashore is extremely uncommon. However a confluence of situations — the spring migration, ideally suited water temperatures, and large colleges of menhaden (also referred to as bunker) packed tightly to the coast — seems to have drawn the tuna to inside spitting distance of the shoreline. Jennette’s Pier employees and native anglers have not too long ago confirmed that massive menhaden colleges within the space.

The motion kicked off the morning of March 31, when anglers hooked multiple bluefin. Movies from the scene present spinning reels screaming and rods doubled over as anglers tried to maintain up with the freight-train energy of a bluefin. Greg Allen was fortunate sufficient to hook up twice. The primary one spooled him, and the second broke his line. In the long run, nothing extra thrilling than some shad and small croaker hit the planks that day, based on Jennette’s. 

Preventing tuna is addictive, although, and Allen wasn’t about to throw in his bait towel. He was fortunate sufficient to hook yet one more bluefin whereas fishing from the pier on Sunday. After a 2-hour 30-minute battle, he managed to wrangle the tuna subsequent to the pier, which is taken into account a catch. Jennette’s Pier employees estimated the fish weighed between 150 and 175 kilos.

“Allen stated he ‘popped it off’ and it swam away,” Jennette’s Pier stated in its Monday fishing report. 

On April 4, Stefan Turko of Kitty Hawk landed a formidable 140-pound bluefin from his kayak whereas fishing off the top of Jennette’s.

“I feel it’s gonna be laborious for me to prime this one for a very long time,” Turko stated in a Facebook post. “Stated a prayer on the best way out for a secure day, and god blessed me greater than I might think about.”

One other kayak angler, Aki Min, hooked a 154-pound bluefin simply yards off the pier on April 5. After going for a 3-mile experience courtesy of the huge fish, Min landed on the seashore with the tuna, which was longer than he’s tall, subsequent to Jennette’s Pier.  

“It is going to be laborious to prime this one,” Min stated in a submit. “Let’s all hope the fish stick round for some time, and a few extra individuals can get one. And possibly they’ll be again in future years, too.”

Jennette’s Pier confirmed Monday that one other bluefin was hooked and launched from the pier. Workers shared footage of James Carroll of Oceanview, Virginia, combating the fish, as the big bluefin had his reel screaming.

Jennette’s is a 1,000-foot-long concrete pier situated in Nags Head. Whereas water depth on the offshore testing area, which is simply over 300 yards from the seaward finish of the pier, is roughly 36 ft deep, water depths off the northern and southern sides of the pier solely common 10 to twenty ft. The pier is simply 10 miles north of Oregon Inlet, the place a fleet of constitution and leisure fishing boats head every morning to the Gulf Stream some 35 miles offshore to catch tuna.

Laws round bluefin tuna stay strict. Monday’s fish was correctly launched based on federal regulations. Jennette’s Pier employees emphasised that anglers can’t legally preserve bluefin caught from a pier or the shore.  

“These fish are often 30 to 50 miles offshore,” one seasoned OBX angler instructed Outside Life. “To see them caught proper off the seashore is insane.”

Atlantic bluefin tuna are the biggest of the tuna species. They’ll develop as much as 13 ft and weigh over 2,000 kilos. These  deepwater giants reside within the western Atlantic and vary from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, the place they sometimes spawn in mid-April.

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If anglers preserve hooking these deep-sea bluefins proper off the pier, Jennette’s might develop into a tuna hotspot, drawing anglers from up and down the East Coast.