Tuna Fishing Fuel Requirements

[Captain PartyMarty]

Hey Guy's

I have spent a bunch of time reading all the posts about Tuna Fishing and am looking to get some opinions if I should add fuel capacity for our trip.

We are going to Winter Harbor the first week of September to try for tuna. I have never fished Tuna and neither has my crew. So its going to be interesting and exciting trip. I plan to try and connect up with some buddy boats and not stray too far from the pack.

Boat 24ft Seasport with brand new twin 200hp seapros

My fuel burn: 12-13 gal/hr crusing good conditions 30MPH
Rough Conditions 10Gal/hr running at 20MPH

My boat has two fuel tanks with a combined capacity of 116Gal. Based on my reading out of winter harbour I can expect to find tuna 30 to 40 miles.

So I would expect to burn 25-30Gals on the way out and same on the way in so that takes the first 60Gal. assuming that we are out there trolling and hunting around all day does 56 gallons seem like enough? I am planning on trolling on one of the twins at a time so at 6 to 7 knots I would expect to burn maybe 3 to 4 gal/hr?

In terms of Boating the thing that worries me the most is running out of fuel and I so I am constantly watching the fuel gauge and fuel burn on the engines.

Would you add fuel capacity if so how much and would you do it with Jerry cans or step up to a fuel bladder?

 

[Aces]

I feel you’re overthinking this.

I’ve ran out 50-60 miles and never used more than 80 gallons

I would watch your consumption and when or if you’re getting to around 70 gallons burned......head in! That leaves you lots plus your 15% reserve, which should always be factored in for safety

 

[ryanb]

116 gallons should be lots based on your numbers. Watch what you burned running out, let say it's 25 gal. Once you hit 55 gallons burned, time to run back in. Should be around 25 gal back in giving you 80 gal total burned with a 35 gallons reserve.

I have a single 250 and get maybe 25% better economy then you running out/in, but probably burn more trolling. 40 miles run out, 8 hours trolling, 50 miles run back in was 56 gallons in my boat. I only have a 70 gallon tank so carried 4 jerry cans for emergency, which you shouldn't have to. But pack a few if it makes you feel more comfortable. You don't have to worry about transferring fuel except in emergency. It would take quite the mishap to burn through your whole tank of fuel.

 

[Brian Reiber]

We have a single 250 and ran 52 miles for tuna last summer. We have 2 - 100L tanks. We were nervous about fuel consumption as well as it was our first tuna trip. We packed 5 jerry cans but only put 20L in each one so they weren't a slosh hazard. When we got to the Canyon where we started fishing we immediately offloaded the fuel into one tank. We could only take on 4 of the jerry cans. That put us back to two full tanks and the plan was if we ever consumed one side tank it was time to head in. That situation never presented itself and we ran back in with a full jerry can sitting on the deck. Depending on how far the tuna are this year we will pack less and probably strap the empty cans to the bow. You have a much bigger dance floor than us so that might not be an issue. The other major contributing factor to our low fuel burn was that we left Ukee around 3am. We have this weird obsession about being on the fishing grounds to watch the sunrise. Because it was pitch black and the weather wasn't ideal we didn't do more than 10 or 15 mph until about 530 am.

Good luck it's an insanely fun fishery if you find them. We can't wait to do it again this year.

 

[Captain PartyMarty]

Thanks for the input guy's I will likely pack some Jerry cans just to make myself feel better. Looking at the SST data it looks like the warm water is getting closer and closer! Can't wait, Going to spend the money on tuna gear instead

 

[Brian Reiber]

Thanks for the input guy's I will likely pack some Jerry cans just to make myself feel better. Looking at the SST data it looks like the warm water is getting closer and closer! Can't wait, Going to spend the money on tuna gear instead

There are a lot of guys on the forum with multi season tuna experience. Some of them reached out to us via pm and offered some very valuable intel and WWW resources. I can probably dig up some of those names from my inbox if you really want to lose sleep researching this. Or you can do the simplest thing, send Derby a pm he helped us out huge. He gave Mike a ton of valuable info and helped us purchase a $750 "starter kit" of gear. I think we only fished $300 or $400 worth of it but it was nice to have options and we came home with 21 tuna. Not bad for a 52 mile virgin excursion. He probably can't help you with the Winter Harbour part but surely Oli can. Derby would be a great tackle resource though.

 

[Corey_lax]

Anyone have that photo of the boat going for tuna with like 10 Jerry cans hanging on the sides of the boat like they were bumpers? That picture is hilarious

Found the photo with a google search.

 

[Seagirt]

I remember that run, it was end of season and fish were way south. They ran into Washington waters and needed the extra fuel. Those guys are seasoned tuna veterans...you can tell because they covered the motors to keep them clean from the tuna blood.

 

[getbent]

Anyone have that photo of the boat going for tuna with like 10 Jerry cans hanging on the sides of the boat like they were bumpers? That picture is hilarious

Found the photo with a google search.

The Croatian sensations...I remember that day...lol

 

[getbent]

One other thing to consider is when you get out to the blue water, if there aren't fish you can easily cover a lot of ground searching, which is the basically the same as trolling on fish, but if you start running to numbers from other boats...it is a hunt and you can put the miles on for sure...I would always stay on the side of caution.
You will have invested a lot of time and money to get out to the grounds, you may as well give yourself the best shot at hooking up and not being overly stressed about fuel consumption...take the Jerry cans...