YouTuber Scott Fish was in for the ride of a lifetime when fishing for tuna he hooked something big – an encounter caught on video that Fish described as his “fight of the year”.
Massive yellowfin tuna drags kayak angler into rocks
“Oh my God we hooked a freaking yellowtail and it’s big!” exclaimed Fish in the beginning of the viral video. “Time to get towed thirty miles out to sea.”
As Fish predicted, the hooked tuna takes off dragging Fish behind him. Rather than dragging him out to sea, the tuna towed Fish and his kayak in towards shore.
“It feels like… a bluefin. I don’t like that he’s dragging me in shallow now,” Fish observed, beginning to doubt his initial identification of the bigger fish as a yellowfin tuna.
Fish’s reel dramatically bent and he noted that the tuna dove as Fish was dragged closer in toward the rocky shore.
“I see the fish,” he said. “It is a humongous yellowtail!”
Fish has been nearly beached when the yellowtail tuna broke the line.
Yellowfin versus bluefin tuna
Pacific yellowfin tuna are a torpedo-shaped fish with metallic dark blue coloring on their back and upper sides fading to yellow and silver on their bellies. Their fins are, as one might expect, yellow.
Yellowfin tuna can reach six feet in length and weigh up to 400 pounds – an almost even match for a kayak angler! By comparison to their larger cousin the bluefin tuna, yellowfin are small. An adult bluefin tuna can reach 13 feet in length and weigh up to 2000 pounds, and can certainly take an unsuspecting kayak angler for a The Old Man And The Sea style ride.
Massive yellowfin tuna catches kayak angler. Feature Image: Scott Fish | YouTube
