A 300-POUND CLASS YELLOWFIN TUNA LANDED BY CHARTER BOAT MARLA II

July 14, 2006, Danny Osuna, Marla's Sportfishing, Rob Hammer's 300-pound plus El Banco yellowfin tuna:

Rob Hammer from Miami, Florida, landed a nice over 300 pound plus yellowfin cow tuna aboard the Marla II with me, Capt. Danny Osuna while fishing at El Banco in Puerto Vallarta waters. The water condition were calm seas with only a little breeze blowing in the afternoon, and nice blue water with a 88 degree temperature.

After releasing few blue marlin during our first 2 days of fishing with Rob, we finally put him on a big battle with a big cow yellowfin tuna.

We started early in the morning and we caught a lot of bait, skippies, and we started slow trolling the skippies all over the banks, back and forth. It was really a nice morning. We started seeing a lot of big tunas crashing and chasing the small skippies and same crabs.

Well, after few hours of just seeing these fish, we decided to chunk bait for a while and we stopped the boat for maybe 1 hour and 30 minutes, but we did not get any strikes.

So we went back to catching fresh bait again and we switched to smaller leader sizes. Not longer than 1 minute after we had put the poor bait in the water she got nailed by a big tuna. We hooked this fish on a TLD50 Shimano. Well, after the first 30 minutes of fighting this fish the reel seat frame blew up. Luckily, Rob Hammer caught the reel and put it pretty much in free spool. I ran down to see what happened. Then we retied the top shot to a 30LRS Tiagra and after 2 hours and 45 minutes finally we landed this beast.

This week we had great offshore fishing also for Capt. Scott of Arca de Noe and Capt. Alonso Osuna of the Marla III, landing and releasing a few blue marlin, pargos, and same tunas. We are having a great week of fishing.

(See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from Puerto Vallarta and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for Puerto Vallarta may be found at Mexfish.com's main Puerto Vallarta page.