August 12 was a picture-perfect boating day on Cape Cod Bay—flat calm, no wind, and sunny. Pleasure boaters welcome high sun, fog-free skies, and slick seas, but run-and-gun tuna fishermen tend to consider those conditions a recipe for a tough bite. That’s exactly what the New Jersey-based “Tuna Junkies” had experienced in the days leading up to one of the most memorable catches of their lives.
Captain Billy Hayes, Captain James Kuhl, and his father, Captain Jim Kuhl, are no strangers to chasing giant bluefin. From April to December, the trio prowls the nearshore tuna grounds off New Jersey and Long Island, armed with some of the most powerful spinning gear on the market. Each time they leave the dock, they have one collective goal: to jig and pop for Volkswagen-sized tuna.
With their home waters full of recreational-size bluefin this summer, a trip to Cape Cod was in order. There, giant bluefin had been feasting on a mix of sand eels, squid, and menhaden for about a month. It was an easy decision for the Tuna Junkies to move Hayes’ 25-foot, 1977 restored SeaVee, the Fish Whistle, to the Outer Cape. Whether the tuna popped up east of Cape Cod or inside Cape Cod Bay, they’d be close to the action.
According to Hayes, the morning of August 12 unfolded much like the others had that week.
“Every day, the bunker moved,” he said. “We’d spend all day searching the bay, waiting for them to pop up. A couple times, they didn’t appear until almost 6 p.m.”
Once the bunker pods surfaced, Hayes and the Kuhls knew it was only a matter of time before the bluefin ripped through them.
“We had perfect conditions that day. It was glass calm with miles of visibility, so we could easily notice when any bait or fish surfaced,” Hayes continued. “We spotted a few singles throughout the day—one fish here, one there—but there wasn’t much bait around yet.”
After several long hours of waiting and casting at a few scattered fish, the three-man crew paused for a lobster roll lunch in Provincetown. Shortly afterward, Hayes received a call from a friend urging him to drop everything and get back out there.
“He said the bite was on, so we bolted back through Provincetown Harbor,” Hayes said. “It was adrenaline-induced chaos. We had barely eaten, so there were baskets of french fries flying all over the deck,” he laughed. “It was a mess, but when we returned to the area, there were fish popping up everywhere we looked.”
The midday feeds were far more sustained than any they had encountered so far. Instead of one or two fish rising and disappearing, larger groups of giant tuna were tearing through bunker schools.
Hayes raced toward a nearby feed and killed the engine, allowing the boat to slide into position. Capt. Jim Kuhl fired a cast into the melee, followed by Capt. James Kuhl, leaving Hayes to bat cleanup. The Amegari Dzanga popper on Hayes’ rod sealed the deal.
“That popper has a deep-cupped face, so it’s loud, throws a ton of water, and makes a nice bubble trail when swept,” Hayes said. “I think the fish I hooked was in a school of three or four instead of the singles and pairs we had been casting to, so they were just a little more competitive,” he noted.
Based on the initial run, Hayes was prepared to settle in for a long, arduous battle with an enormous fish.
“When we hooked up, it dumped the spool, and we had to chase it down at 22 to 25 mph,” Hayes recalled. “Once the fish finally stopped, it was stretched way out. It never pinwheeled or dove, which made it much easier for me to gain back line,” he continued.
“After exactly 27 minutes,” Hayes said, “the fish came alongside the boat, broadside, and James got the dart in it without a problem. I was concerned that the fish was still green, but it never took off again.”
With the fish harpooned and tail-roped, the gravity of his catch set in and the Tuna Junkies steamed toward Sesuit Harbor in Dennis where it would be weighed, picked up, and processed by Red’s Best. There, Hayes’ tuna tipped the scale to a whopping 753 pounds and measured 108 inches long to the fork.
The Tuna Junkies’ Tackle
Typically, a bluefin tuna exceeding 100 inches would take more than 60 minutes, if not several grueling hours, to subdue. “I also caught a 730-pound fish that same week, but it took us well over an hour to land it,” Hayes said. “The bigger fish must’ve just worn itself out on the initial run.”
The remarkably short 27-minute fight was largely due to Hayes’ and the Kuhls’ meticulous rigging and careful selection of gear and terminal tackle.
“We mostly use 20K to 30K Shimano Stella spools, but we’ll occasionally use an 18000,” Hayes said. “My reel that day was loaded with Ocean Devil PE 14, which I was just testing out. Typically, we spool up with PE 12 or PE 15 paired with 200-pound-test Jinkai fluorocarbon or 300-pound-test Jinkai monofilament leader.”
The rod Hayes used to outmuscle the massive bluefin was a 6’6″ CB One Monsta, which boasts exceptional flexibility without sacrificing lifting power, making it well suited for trophy-class bluefin.
Despite catching a 753-pound tuna on spinning gear—a feat that once seemed impossible to many—Hayes remains humbled by his quarry and ready for the next challenge.
“The gear for the kind of fishing we do is so advanced now, I suppose catching a 1,000-pound fish on spinning tackle is possible,” he said. “The only thing we might need to make that happen is thinner, stronger line.”
Until then, he and the Kuhls will keep pushing their jig-and-pop gear to its limits.
With a new personal-best bluefin under his belt, and a good chunk of the tuna season still ahead, Hayes is looking forward to chasing trophy fish with the Kuhls in their backyard again.
“That 5-hour-plus drive to Cape Cod really sucks,” he chuckled. “It’s an amazing fishery, but I’m excited for the fall, when giants move in to feed on bunker right off the beaches of New Jersey.”
» Subscribe to the Tuna Junkies YouTube Channel, where they plan to release a video of this memorable trip and catch.
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