Chunking & Live Baiting for Blackfin Tuna
When you prefer to target blackfin tuna on light tackle rather than your trolling gear, chunking can be extremely fun and effective. This will be similar to chunking for yellowfin tuna, however you can scale everything down a bit and even use spinning tackle to really have a blast as long as you can avoid the taxman. To get the party started, be prepared to chum a mixture of live and dead baits to bring the blackfins to you.
An ideal rod and reel setup starts with a reel similar to a Talica 10II, Accurate BV-500, or Avet MXL which are all capable of holding around 500 yards of 50lb braid, matched up with a Shimano Trevala TVC-66MH. While 500 or more yards of 50lb braid isn't always needed, you never know when you may hook into a wahoo, yellowfin, shark, or marlin that may test your reel's line capacity. Spinning setups are also great, allowing you to make casts towards breaking fish that may be fired up within your slick. A Shimano Saragosa SRG6000SW matched up with a TackleDirect TDPS701220KF will be hard to beat for battling 30lb blackfins before a shark gets ahold of them.
Chunking for blackfin is often predicated on being as stealthy as possible when dropping down to 40, 30, or 25lb fluorocarbon leader is often the difference between getting bit at all and your crew limiting out. Usually best to start off with long 40-60lb fluorocarbon leaders to help keep the barrel swivel attaching to your mainline as far out of sight as possible, and continuing to drop down in lb test until you get bit if you are consistently marking fish beneath you or seeing the fleet around you on the meat.
Usually best to use small Owner or Quick Rig ringed circle or j hooks on the light leader in order to give you a little leeway and protection from breaking off. Baits ranging from live and chunked pilchards, herring, google eyes, and even pinfish. Live baits should be hooked through the nose, mouth, or bridled in order to preserve their friskiness, while hooks in dead baits should be completely concealed inside the bait to help entice even the most wary blackfins.
When deploying your chunking spread, it is best to stagger a few baits deep with weights and balloons so they fall directly into the chunks that are falling in the water column. These reels can sit in free spool with the clicker, while you should also have a few feeder setups going as well, where you are free lining them back into the spread without weight. Simply pull line off the rod tip and make sure your line is not resulting in a tangled mess or stuck on your boats engines or bracket in the water beneath you.