Fishing is usually hot on Jennette’s Pier this time of year, with anglers hooking plenty of croaker, bluefish, and sizable red drum. But landing deep-sea fish like bluefin tuna there is unheard of. Bluefin don’t typically show up 1,000 feet from the sand. But someone apparently forgot to tell the fish that.
For more than a week now, anglers fishing from Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina, have been hooking sizable bluefin tuna right off the end of the pier — an unprecedented streak that has stunned locals and lit up the Outer Banks fishing community.
Seeing them almost within casting distance of the beach is incredibly unusual. But a confluence of conditions — the spring migration, ideal water temperatures, and massive schools of menhaden (also known as bunker) packed tightly to the coast — appears to have drawn the tuna to within spitting distance of the shoreline. Jennette’s Pier staff and local anglers have recently confirmed that big menhaden schools in the area.
The action kicked off the morning of March 31, when anglers hooked multiple bluefin. Videos from the scene show spinning reels screaming and rods doubled over as anglers tried to keep up with the freight-train strength of a bluefin. Greg Allen was lucky enough to hook up twice. The first one spooled him, and the second broke his line. In the end, nothing more exciting than some shad and small croaker hit the planks that day, according to Jennette’s.
Fighting tuna is addictive, though, and Allen wasn’t about to throw in his bait towel. He was lucky enough to hook yet another bluefin while fishing from the pier on Sunday. After a 2-hour 30-minute fight, he managed to wrangle the tuna next to the pier, which is considered a catch. Jennette’s Pier staff estimated the fish weighed between 150 and 175 pounds.
“Allen said he ‘popped it off’ and it swam away,” Jennette’s Pier said in its Monday fishing report.
On April 4, Stefan Turko of Kitty Hawk landed an impressive 140-pound bluefin from his kayak while fishing off the end of Jennette’s.
“I think it’s gonna be hard for me to top this one for a long time,” Turko said in a Facebook post. “Said a prayer on the way out for a safe day, and god blessed me more than I could imagine.”
Another kayak angler, Aki Min, hooked a 154-pound bluefin just yards off the pier on April 5. After going for a 3-mile ride courtesy of the massive fish, Min landed on the beach with the tuna, which was longer than he is tall, next to Jennette’s Pier.
“It will be hard to top this one,” Min said in a post. “Let’s all hope the fish stick around for a while, and some more people can get one. And maybe they’ll be back in future years, too.”
Jennette’s Pier confirmed Monday that another bluefin was hooked and released from the pier. Staff shared footage of James Carroll of Oceanview, Virginia, fighting the fish, as the large bluefin had his reel screaming.
Jennette’s is a 1,000-foot-long concrete pier located in Nags Head. While water depth at the offshore testing area, which is just over 300 yards from the seaward end of the pier, is approximately 36 feet deep, water depths off the northern and southern sides of the pier only average 10 to 20 feet. The pier is just 10 miles north of Oregon Inlet, where a fleet of charter and recreational fishing boats head each morning to the Gulf Stream some 35 miles offshore to catch tuna.
Regulations around bluefin tuna remain strict. Monday’s fish was properly released according to federal regulations. Jennette’s Pier staff emphasized that anglers cannot legally keep bluefin caught from a pier or the shore.
“These fish are usually 30 to 50 miles offshore,” one seasoned OBX angler told Outdoor Life. “To see them caught right off the beach is insane.”
Atlantic bluefin tuna are the largest of the tuna species. They can grow up to 13 feet and weigh over 2,000 pounds. These deepwater giants live in the western Atlantic and range from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, where they typically spawn in mid-April.
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If anglers keep hooking these deep-sea bluefins right off the pier, Jennette’s could become a tuna hotspot, drawing anglers from up and down the East Coast.
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