Capt. Dick Harris is a well-seasoned Outer Banks, North Carolina, skipper who’s plied the offshore waters for the last 44 years. Plainly put, this man can catch tuna — it doesn’t matter what kind.

Harris and I are longtime friends, having fished out of Oregon Inlet Fishing Center for more years than we care to admit. We speak almost daily. Harris owns and operates Fintastic, a 55-foot sportfish built by legendary captain and Carolina boatbuilding pioneer Omie Tillett. This past February, Harris invited my wife, Capt. Sarah Gardner, and me tuna fishing with one of his best clients, who was fishing alone and wanted some company. There was a nice weather window with two clear days, so we gladly accepted the invite. Winter weather on the Outer Banks is notoriously harsh, but we won the lottery and were gifted a beautiful day.
The winter tuna bite kicks off with the arrival of bluefin in late December, and they typically hang around until early April. Yellowfin are caught year-round, with prime time running from early spring through June. In recent years, however, crews have managed yellowfin bites deeper into summer.

During the last 10 years, Harris says, the bluefin bite has been almost automatic from early January through early March. The caveat is the weather. The size of the fish varies from season to season, but the old tuna captain has seen more small bluefin around (smaller than 73 inches) than the last few years. The silver lining is that these fish will continue to grow, and next season there will be more big fish.
“The best thing about catching a big bluefin is the bite,” Harris says. “They open a massive hole in the water.”

It was a little before 5 a.m., and the docks at Oregon Inlet Fishing Center were alive with frenetic energy. Bright lights shining down from the sportfishing fleet illuminated the dark morning as anglers showed up and mates scurried about. It was still pitch black when Harris’s mate, Cary Foster, untied the dock lines.
Several boats lined up for the run to the inlet. The channel is a challenge during the day, but running it in the dark flat-out sucks. We were fortunate; the ocean was calm, with only a slight break cresting on the bar. Oregon Inlet is no joke. Like a sleeping drunk, it can wake up angry at any time. The inlet is wide and shallow, and a ton of current pushes through the narrow channel. Any big swell from the east combined with a strong ebb tide will cause waves to break hollow on the bar.
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Several weeks after this trip, we lost two seasoned captains who had crossed the inlet for years, Charlie Griffin and Chad Dunn, as they were heading back to Wanchese. The boat developed engine trouble, and I suspect they took a wave over the stern in the dark and the next wave rolled them. You can’t take Oregon Inlet lightly.
A MATE’S WORK IS NEVER DONE
I’ve known Harris’s deckhand since he was a toddler, and he works tirelessly. As we made the two-plus-hour run to the tuna grounds, Foster set up the cockpit for action. He placed four 130-pound, bend-butt trolling outfits in the rod holders for bluefin and checked the drags with a scale. Then he attached a rigged ballyhoo to each rod.

Several boats were already fishing when we arrived at our spot. Harris pulled back the throttles, lowered the outriggers, and we set out the baits. Just as the captain said he was marking plenty of bluefin on the bottom machine, we instantly hooked four tuna.
They were a smaller class of fish — 80 inches and under — but man, they pulled hard. Two fish came unbuttoned, and the other two were cranked to the boat. We harvested one fish smaller than 73 inches — crews are allowed one fish under 73 inches per boat each day during the recreational season. Foster released the other fish and set the baits back out. Harris drove us over another mark, and we hooked four more tuna. We released three and pulled the hook on the other. After one more pass, we hooked, landed and released four more bluefin. Just as Harris had predicted, the fishing was nearly automatic.
As the sun continued to rise, the morning bite slowed. Harris decided to make a run and steamed 12 miles farther offshore. He is a master when it comes to fishing the ledges around The Point, an area where the water drops from 20 to 40 fathoms into the abyss of the Continental Shelf. Yellowfin tuna love to herd bait into the ledges. Harris had heard of a few yellowfin caught several days earlier, and conditions were ripe. He watches sea-surface satellite charts to pinpoint when warm water pushes across the ledges, drawing yellowfin like a pack of wolves. “The ideal water temps for yellowfin in the winter on The Point is 70-plus degrees,” Harris says.

After our jog, Foster put out the yellowfin tackle — 50- and 70-pound-class rods with 90-pound fluorocarbon wind-on leaders and skirted heads known as Sea Witches rigged with dead ballyhoo. Not long after we set out, we hooked five yellowfin and landed all of them. Thirty minutes later, we hooked five more.
Harris made a wide loop, and it looked like someone dropped a depth charge into the spread. Six of the eight rods heeled over as giant bluefin stormed for the horizon. All of these fish were 400-plus pounds. It did not end well. A couple of fish broke leaders on the strike. Others pulled drag for 30 seconds before spitting the hook. We were undergunned, so we pushed the drag levers to full to stop the fish from spooling our reels. My wife hooked one on an 80 and fought the fish for maybe 20 minutes before it pulled free. Hooking giant tuna on 50s and 70s is a no-win situation — you don’t stand much of a chance to land the fish, and long, protracted fights are bad for giants you intend to release.
When the chaos subsided, we headed back to the dock with a box full of tuna. The veteran crew showed their mettle, but you never know when the giants are going to crash the party.