For Tuna charters out Depoe bay and New port try Nalu charters. Mike does sixpack trips and is a very fishy guy.
A good friend of mine wrote this on another forum, it pretty much explains what we do in the summer when the ocean lets us.
"Ok.. about TUNA! First let me say that my name is John and that I am a tunaholic.
The fish are juvenile Albacore and they range in size from 4 to 40 lbs. Very few over 35 and not many under 10 are caught by the sport guys. These fish come within 20 miles of our coast most years and several times have been caught less than 10 miles out. Mixed in with the schools of Albacore are Big eye and Bluefin. From what I have read the Big eye is almost never caught on hook and line and only a few bluefin have been landed. Albacore feed all night near the surface and can be found there at 1st and last light and for short times during the day. There is some research on telemetrically tagged fish that show an all night feeding behavior near the surface and a diving and rising behavior believed to be sleep during the day. The fish rise to within 30 meters of the surface and then glide back to depths approaching 300 meters before rising back up again.
What we do here is mostly trolling during daylight hours. Handlines and rod/reel with feather jigs, cedar plugs and also some casting plastic swimbaits with light tackle. We hunt in groups and use this website to hook up for trips all summer on most any day of the week. Weather conditions and the infrared satellite photos on Terrafin determine the best days to fish. Trips start in early July and go through September and sometimes even into October. Many believe that the fish arrive before then and stay till after the effort ceases.
A typical trip lasts 12 hours. We leave before 1st light (0500) and run out 30 plus miles to seamounts and other known locations near the continental slope and look for blue, clear water at 60 degrees or better. 62 is about ideal. Fish can be found near sudden temperature changes called 'breaks', near floating debris and I believe they habituate bottom structure like pinnacles and seamounts even hundreds of feet down. Trips end due to the boat overloaded with fish, the ice all used up or fuel use or weather changing for the worse.
The pack arrives on the fishing grounds at 0800 or so and the hunt begins. Usually scattered over many square miles until the deal goes down. Once fish are located the radio starts squawking and we converge on the location. Nothing can adequately describe the chaos of a full on TUNA! bite but many fishers here on this website and others have made good tries at describing it.
I typically drive at cruise speed until I see birds sitting or working bait, cobalt blue 62 degree water or a temperature break of a 1/2 degree or more. Sometimes you will see airborne albacore, 'jumpers' in cooler water and getting them to bite can be a real challenge.
When the location is fishy enough we deploy our gear and troll at a fairly high rate of 6 to 10 mph. Most boats use a combination of handlines, divers and rod/reel aka standup gear. Some use all of one or the other. Standup gear is a 4/0 sized reel with four or five hundred yards of 80# spectra line and a 30 to 50 lb rod, typical. Many other combinations are used but that is pretty common. A handline or meatline is a line tied to the boat with a bungee shock absorber on the boat end. Most handlines are made of Ashaway 200# TUNA! cord which is about 1/8" and bright blue when new. Handlines come in various lengths from 30 to 100 feet and have a heavy duty swivel on the end for easy rig changeout. A diver is an orange surfboard like contraption about 10 inches long (Yo-Zuri 9.0) that runs on a short length of TUNA! cord and dives down 10 or 15 feet below the boat. The big line does not seem to bother the fish and albacore are in my experience not the least bit leader shy.
I use 200#, 7 foot mono leaders on all my feather jigs so that they can be used on handline or standup gear. Cedar plugs are on 7 foot, 100# or 150# mono leaders. I only use cedar plugs on standup gear because the fish will break the leader on the handline.
Whatever you fish you deploy in either a mass at the same (50' or so) distance from the boat or in a vee pattern with the lines at the corners of the boat farther out than the middle. I use diver boards, handlines and standup gear all together and deploy 5 to 8 lines total. And I use the vee setup with the corners at 150' for standup gear, 100 feet for the corner handlines, 30 feet for the corner diver boards and 50 feet for the middle handline. Some guys on the larger boats also use outriggers for standup gear.
Ok, so you are fishing now and there is no need to watch the standup rods at all. Just set the drag pretty loose and the clicker on. There will be no doubt at all when you get slammed. Handlines need to be watched at all times because they make little or no noise. Divers pop up in your wake and thrash around so a bite there is pretty easy to spot. In any case multiples are common and there have been days when everything gets slammed at once. 8 lines and three fishers quickly turns into a one legged man at an *** kicking festival.
These fish are nuclear powered and can swim at speeds approaching 40 mph. Nothing sounds like a 4/0 with 30 lbs of albacore peeling the line off of it. They do not tire very quickly and often sound in water that is over 1500 feet deep. Once we start getting slammed, the trick is to keep the boat moving and haul fish to the boat. I often throw handfulls of chunked herring into the wake and pump the blood over with the bilge pump on a strike to encourage more strikes.
TUNA! bleed like crazy and if not handled properly can trash around in the boat at blinding speeds, flinging blood and scales everywhere.
It is a very primal experience and will bring out the cave man in you in short order.
Sound like fun?
But wait there is more .... you quit at 14:00 and run in, bloody and sore armed. The boat looks like a tuna suicide bomber exploded inside the cockpit. You get back to Dopey bay at 16:00 or even 17:00. It is pretty hard not to have a huge S.E.G. painted on your face and you then spend 4 to 6 hours cleaning your 20 plus fish at the cleaning station. Much story telling, consumption of cactus juice and gear swapping goes on all evening. Someone fires up the barbq and the wasabi makes an appearance. Crews drag boats off for a refuel and ice stop. Some go home and some come back to the parking lot to spend the night.
About midnight you find a shower and a place to sleep. Some of you will overcome your common sense and fatigue and go again the very next morning.
Peace, Tom
