Will We See A Familiar SFC Foe at The Walker’s Cay Open?

Every good story needs a villain: Hannibal Lecter, Thanos, The Joker, Darth Vader, Hans Landa, Norman Bates all come to mind in cinema. The 1980s Miami Hurricanes, Michigan’s Fab 5, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Broad Street Bullies, the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick Patriots (depending on who you ask) Bad Boy era Pistons. Phil Mickelson for Tiger fans, Tiger Woods for Mickelson fans. John McEnroe. 

In the 2025 SFC season, there’s one villain that has wreaked havoc on every angling club across the Atlantic and Gulf Divisions.

Tunas.

At the season opening Fort Lauderdale Billfish Open, it was primarily blackfin tunas, with a few massive bluefins and yellowfins attacking the clubs’ kite spreads. Over the Gulf season-opening East Pass Challenge, there were few more bluefin tunas. It reached a fever pitch a couple weeks ago at the Hurricane Hole Louisiana Open, presented by XTRATUF, where all seven angling clubs had at least one massive bluefin tuna hooked. 

Captain Blake Bridges of the Gulf Coast Cowboys, SFC’s original “ping king” of sonar, was marking walls of the massive tunas. In some areas, the school was 50 feet tall and up to 75 feet long. Star angler Jaselyn Berthelot of Mississippi Blues Angling Club caught and released the first bluefin of her career, estimated anywhere between 700 and 1000 pounds. 

If the quota to harvest was still open, it likely would have been a Louisiana State Record. Earlier in April when the season was open, a center console catamaran caught a pending Texas state record at 884 pounds. Unfortunately for competitors, there is no point total for bluefin tunas, given that the quota for keeping a bluefin is heavily restricted to protect the species from overfishing. 

The Gulf quotas are particularly strict, given that the Gulf of Mexico is one of two bodies of water where Atlantic bluefin tuna go to spawn annually. The western schools go to the Gulf, the eastern schools go to the Mediterranean. 

This just happens to be the time of year where the bluefins are spawning, up until the end of May into early June. At that point, the tunas make their migration back out of the Gulf of Mexico (Mediterranean in the east) and head back to the Atlantic Ocean. 

That's good news for SFC’s seven Gulf Division Clubs.

But what does that mean for the seven Atlantic Division Clubs? For the bluefins to get back to the North Atlantic, they funnel through the Florida Straits and catch the Gulfstream. What’s located right off the Gulfstream? 

The Bahamas. Specifically the Abacos in the northern Bahamas. What’s the northernmost point of the Abacos?

Walker’s Cay. 

With multiple Atlantic Division clubs prefishing a week prior to the Walker’s Cay Open, we should be receiving reports of whether there’s any tuna activity yet. In the meantime, captains and anglers will keep their fingers crossed to see more bills than finlets. 

It will be a hot button question at media day to say the least when we meet the angling clubs on May 28th.