In large fish, the second dorsal and anal fins may be exceedingly elongated and bright yellow. Yellowfin tuna less than 75cm fork length (10kg whole weight) may be difficult to distinguish from small bigeye tuna.
A beautiful and colourful tuna. Blue to steel black above, silver to silvery gold on the flanks, silvery white below. In fresh fish a band of bright gold or iridescent blue (sometimes both) runs along the upper flank, separating the dark back from the lighter belly area.
The stomach area sometimes carries oval, colourless patches and vague broken vertical bars of white. These are more obvious in juveniles.
The yellowfins fins are bright yellow. The finlets, in particular are canary yellow with black margins.
In Australian waters fish of between 2 and 80kg are common with some specimens reaching 100kg. In other countries Yellowfin have been recorded in excess of 150kg.
Yellowfin is a very good eating fish. It is extremely good as sashimi (raw fish).
Yellowfin Tuna are found close inshore, in clean warm currents, but are more common on the Continental Shelf areas. They prefer clean water with water temperatures of 17-27ºC. They rarely venture into dirty, discoloured areas.
Yellowfin feed both on the surface, and well down in the water column.
Small yellowfin (2-12kg) will take trolled and cast lures, small live baits and sometimes freely drifted pilchards or cut flesh strips. Larger yellowfin take small and medium live baits, up to and including live frigate mackerel, bonito and striped tuna weighing as much as 5kg plus.
A favoured technique for taking large yellowfin involves the use of unweighted flesh strip baits or pilchards used in conjunction with a berley trail of fish 'cubes'
Yellowfin are extremely powerful and demand the best in tackle and gaffs!
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