I thoroughly enjoyed your write-up and the pictures are outstanding! Tuna is a favorite of mine but I've only had Ahi/Yellowfin - it sounds like Bluefin can get considerably larger. As to tablefare - how do they compare?
Giant bluefin over 1000 lbs are fairly regularly caught around here and points north well into Canadian waters. I know of two granders and heard of a third that was caught this commercial season in local waters. Here's the 40 year old world record: can you imagine hooking into this?
https://www.marlinmag.com/bluefin-tuna-record-revisiting-history/We have a robust yellowfin fishery here too, but mostly well offshore. They're rarely taken in the bay, where lots of bluefin are often found. The YFT can grow to very large size, relatively speaking and in general, but I don't know that they get much larger than 500 pounds anywhere in the world, and I'm pretty sure those that do grow to that size are considered to be true monsters. All the truly large ones I've seen have come from Pacific waters. I've never seen any really large YFT taken out this way, but the nice thing here is that we have so many flavors of tuna. We have albacore, skipjack, big eye, yellowfin and bluefin in our waters. We also have false albacore and bonito. They are definitely not all created equal. False albacore are all but inedible. Bonito are spunky fighters and good on the table but a big one is 15 pounds. Both commercially and recreationally, bluefin, bigeye and yellowfin are the real prizes.
As far as table fare, YFT is much leaner than BFT, and is mostly pink fleshed throughout, whereas BFT has the ruby red on top and the marbled pink to creamy white belly cuts underneath. In Japan there are classes of BFT belly meat. Toro, Chu-toro and o-toro, from fatty to superfatty. I enjoy YFT raw and cooked very much for sure, but in my opinion, the BFT is and always will be king both as far as sport, and on the table.
Thanks again for the comments, gents.
