GUEST BLOG: Awaiting the kickoff of the Pacific Northwest albacore season
POSTED June 7, 2009 / 9:30 p.m.

The summer is here and each year there’s always a contest to see who will catch the first albacore off the Oregon coast and more importantly to most people is, when will someone land the first tuna. It’s like the official start of the Oregon and Washington offshore tuna season when it happens.

The seasoned offshore fishermen will tell you albacore have been out there all along, but in the last five years, the traditional salmon fisheries have struggled, leaving offshore fishermen looking for something else to chase. Five years ago on a nice ocean, and in a place like Tuna Town off Depoe Bay, you would’ve been lucky to count half a dozen boats trolling for albacore.

Last summer on a nice ocean in August, you might’ve had a few times where you were forced to change directions to keep from running into another boat.

The sound of screaming reels from multiple hookups has a tendency to get fishermen very addicted to the adrenaline rush caused by the pandemonium that occurs some 50 miles offshore. Some people even refer to it as being more addictive than drugs, and when a newbie gets their first taste of the wild action, we just greet them with a grin and say “welcome to the dark side”. 

The next thing you know they buy a bigger boat, start sneaking new gear into the house, out of sight from the wife, and can’t concentrate at work because they are too busy logging onto chat forums to catch the latest news from offshore.

Running 50+: Every year someone will ask me “do you think the tuna will get very close this year?” and I just grin and answer “yep”. It used to be that a 50-mile run offshore was a long ride, and you were only willing to do it a couple times during the summer.

I agree, 50 miles is still a long run, but we’ve grown so accustomed to running that distance that today 50 miles has become the norm, and even an occasional 60-70 miles is no big deal on a nice ocean.

I should also mention that I also get asked if they will get very close, and sometimes the subject of El Nino or one of the other currents will pop up, inferring that it might play a role in the fishery.

During the winter and spring, we hear the forecast for the summer and people make predictions trying to speculate what’s going to happen, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned from 18 years of chasing tuna off Oregon, it’s that none of that seems to make much difference. They still show up 30-50 miles off the coast and they almost always veer in within a few miles every summer for a short period of time.

The Oregon Tuna Classic Tournament series has also brought national attention to what once was a small, quiet fishery. It was always there, but due to changes in our other fisheries this has emerged as a shining star, shedding a little light at a time when we need something positive to talk about. The constant changes we experience within our fisheries is much like the changes in our daily lives.

I’m confident when the economy picks back up we will have grown a little more from life’s challenges.

Tight lines.

-Del Stephens
Aka “Tuna Dog”