Southern California (SOCAL) has always been a unique place to dive in the United States. With vast kelp forests, offshore Channel Islands, elusive white seabass, and strong fighting yellowtail, it has been a place each spear fishermen should dive at some point in their lives. Over the last few years, the fishing and spearfishing mindset has changed and been strongly focused mainly around the blue fin tuna. Below I will I will breakdown my experiences with spearfishing bluefin here in SOCAL and what it has taken for me and the crews I have been apart of to be successful at getting the fish in the boat. To each their own and I hope that you can read through this and apply a few things to either help you land your first bluefin or beat your PB weight next time you're out. But first, lets get into a brief summary of the last few years and what has led to such an amazing change in SoCal spearfishing.

Thinking back, I would have to say the big change occurred in 2015 when SoCal experienced a strong El Nino that brought up very warm waters from Mexico. This El Nino carried large amounts of game fish like mahi-mahi (dorado), striped marlin, sailfish, and even wahoo! Record numbers of yellowtail also moved through the warm very clear waters of SoCal, making the Channel Islands and kelp paddies a very exciting dive. Talking with local Spearos that grew up in SoCal this was an epic event that was far beyond what Socal diving typically had been, which consisted of cold water white seabass diving and the occasional yellowtail. Bluefin tuna pre 2015 were almost mythical, and Spearos would travel a 100 or miles offshore to banks such as Tanner and Coretz to MAYBE shoot a 20lber. Things have changed.

2016 was the year that SoCal began seeing huge amounts of bluefin tuna and changed the entire mindset of SoCal fishing and diving. Following the 2015 El Nino, the offshore waters during the 2016 fishing season hosted an enormous amount of life bringing in large amounts of bait that led to a massive influx in bluefin. I remember heading offshore in 2016 and seeing multiple schools of bluefin the size of football fields thrashing the surface with birds flocked up so thick they looked like swarms of bees in the distance. I would say the term foamer was coined locally because the water looked like a bubbling eruption as the tuna rotated up and through the bait balls. It was truly amazing to see such a vast amount of life that year. The Spearo’s that were successful were the divers and crews that had some experience in bluewater diving with yellowfin mostly. However, the bluefin provided their own unique challenges and forced even the most experienced divers to adapt to this new unique style of diving in order to connect. Fisherman had very little luck that year because there was so much bait in the water the fish simply were not interested in their lures or presentations. The bluefin had little no interest in a single bait and were very skittish of hooks and thick fishing lines. Surface poppers ended up being successful as fisherman discovered they could throw the lure into a surface foamer, and the popper would basically be masked in the thrashing and eaten out of aggression or mistaken for real bait. That year, spearfishing was the way to get the fish and many picked up the speargun quickly because of it. I would say that the main diving tactic applied that year would have been jumping in on the foamers and swimming in to catch a tuna swarming around the bait. 2016 was a big learning year for approaching the bluefin in order to get a shot off and would continue to be the case through the following years.

Since 2016, I would say very few days in succession have ever been the same for how to attack the bluefin. Each time I ran offshore, I encountered slightly different conditions or bluefin moods that cause us to have to adapt quickly when opportunities presented themselves. Below I will attempt to talk through a few common themes I have experienced when diving for bluefin tuna and even though your situation may fall into one of these categories, you will most likely have to adapt and tweak something in order to be successful. The key is to put in time on the water to witness all this for yourself and build your experience as a diver and crew. Having a solid crew and network is paramount in being conststenly successful. I am by no means saying I am any kind of expert in landing bluefin tuna with a speargun, but I simply want to share my experiences through countless days out on the water chasing these amazing fish. Below I will breakdown a few tips and tactics through these you may encounter while out on the water that hopefully you can utilize to land more fish.

Foamers

This is possibly one of the most exciting times to attempt to spear a bluefin tuna. Nothing gets your heart racing like spotting and approaching a big foamer of bluefin thrashing violently on the surface. Many times, boats will quickly rush in towards the foamer and even into it to put divers in the water. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Usually it doesn’t. Rushing straight at our into a foamer usually drives the fish down and away from the boat leaving everyone wondering what happened.