Summer tuna season splashes into gear: Abundant albacore, occasional bluefin in offshore blue water

Published 2:43 pm Thursday, July 31, 2025

ILWACO — The first albacore tuna catches of the season are flowing into local ports, spurred by ambitious charter captains and local commercial fishermen targeting the highly migratory fish offshore.

“Considering how early in the season it is, it’s been very good 30 to 40 miles offshore for tuna,” said Shake N’ Bake owner and captain Mike Colbach, who kicked off the albacore season with crew delivering hundreds of tuna on a handful of day trips out of the Port of Ilwaco over the past 10 days.

“Our current boat average is about 40 fish, very good for this time of the year,” said. “Usually, it starts slow and builds up. This year it started out good and stayed good.”

Commercial fate rests on price

Local commercial albacore fishermen have also had a successful start to the offshore season, many are anticipated to make their first offload of the season this week.

“Fishing is good,” reported commercial fishermen Zeke Estrella, captain of the F/V Sunset Charge, as he was making his return to port in late July after a more than 30-hour journey that he anticipated would end with his first offload of around 40 tons of tuna at a local processor.

Of the nearly 500 metric tons of tuna offloaded in the Pacific Northwest so far this season, fishermen have received an average of $1.96/pound, up from the dismal $1.52 average for the 2024 season, a factor that caused many to leave the fishery.

“Hopefully, they just stay where they are,” said Estrella. “Not as many tuna boats left. The fleet is half the size it was 10 years ago, due to not getting paid enough for the fish.”

More bluefin showing up

As the albacore tuna season heats up roughly 40 miles off the Washington-Oregon coast, blue water fishermen are finding a once rarely-caught fish increasingly in the mix.

“[We’re] definitely seeing a lot more bluefin [tuna] than we’ve ever seen before,” Colbach said. “Pretty much every day, someone catches a bluefin if not multiple.”

Typically bluefin are found more commonly in the South Pacific, off Baja California and around the Pacific Islands, but this year increasing numbers have been encountered by fishermen off the Oregon-Washington coast.

“We used to catch maybe one or two a year. Most boats who have been fishing two or three trips this year have caught a bluefin. We’ve caught three so far, [and we’ll] probably catch a lot more,” Colbach said.

The current Washington state record bluefin tuna (92.15 pounds) was caught off the coast of Pacific County in 2019, by angler Adam Speer. Last year a 164-pound bluefin was certified out of Garibaldi — probably the Oregon record. California’s bluefin record is 395 pounds.

Reports of bigger bluefin, perhaps a potential Washington state record breaker, have been witnessed among the schools of albacore.

“Last weekend we saw some pretty big bluefin jumping in the green water, somewhere between 70- to 100-pound fish,” Colbach said.

Abundant sea life

Abundant bait and adequate ocean conditions have resulted in a better grade of fish for both salmon and tuna anglers.

“The albacore are definitely a larger grade this year,” Colbach said. “There’s quite a bit of bait offshore. Salmon are also a bit larger this year, must be a lot of baitfish out there.”

Sonar shows masses of baitfish, which are attracting an exciting mix of other sealife, including many whales and seabirds, an Ilwaco recreational fisherman said.