7 Best Tuna Fishing Lures in 2023

Our Top Picks 

The best tuna fishing lures include butterfly jigs, knife jigs, cedar plugs, poppers, and various trolling lures. Here on the West Coast, the Shimano Colt Sniper and the Mustad Rip Roller jigs are popular. When it comes to rigging your lure, usually it’s best to ditch the stock hooks and re-rig it. You never know when a monster cow will hit, leaving your split ring ravaged and hook bent.

In this article, we also show you how the Royal Polaris developed an ingenious way of rigging your jigs that never fail and is easy to change if the bite changes.

7 Best Tuna Fishing Lures

• The Great Tuna Chaser – Rigged Bost #27 Ahi Snack Lure
• The Smoking Rocket Lure – Billy MTSM-17 Rig Ready Mini TS
• The Realistic Tuna Lures – Dr. Fish Saltwater LED Fishing Squid Lures
• The Old-School Fishing Lures – MagBay Lures 6″ Cedar Plug
• Best Tuna Butterfly Jig – Shimano Butterfly Flat-Fall Jigs
• Best Tuna Trolling Lure – Nomad Design DTX Minnow
• Boone Turbo Hammer Lures

1. Rigged Bost #27 Ahi Snack Lure

The Great Tuna Chaser

Key Features:

• Works with both mono and wire rigging
• With mirror-like tips to attract tuna bites
• Designed with aerospace resin for strength
• Handmade in the USA

These tuna lures are specifically designed with several color combinations so you can mirror your target tuna. What distinguishes this lure from others is its capacity to produce a distinct sound that attracts pelagic fish as they swim around in the water.

Its target species are tuna, dolphins, and wahoos, and they have a slight variation compared to its counterparts from its larger face opening. These tuna lures have an aerospace resin finish, making them durable enough not to discolor, break, or crack easily over time.

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2. Billy MTSM-17 Rig Ready Mini TS

The Smoking Rocket Lure

Key Features:

• Has nickel-plated brass bullet heads
• Choose between rigged or unrigged
• Designed with pulsating, flashy Mylar skirts

Specifically designed for turbulence and smoke trails, these tuna lures can catch tuna fish that are fast-swimming, marlin, dolphins, and wahoos. It works effectively and can be deadly when used with and without live bait for high-speed trolling, and good tuna lures for catching tuna (blackfin tuna) and mahi-mahi.

With a supreme trolling speed of around two to twenty knots, these dolphin catcher tuna lures are a piece of must-have equipment for fishing around the Florida Keys. Go fishing around areas without many weeds to maximize their potential to catch all kinds of offshore predator fish.

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3. Boone Turbo Hammer Lures

The Best Tuna Lures for Kite Fishing and Trolling

Key Features:

• Designed with a rubber knot protector
• Can produce smoke trails to attract fish
• Its turbo hammer can either be fished with cigar minnows or plain

These Dave Workman, Jr. Pro Series tuna lures are known for producing smoke trails to strike fish and attack your bait easily. It can either be trolled alone or with strip baits, ballyhoo, and cigar minnow. The best speed for trolling is 2 to 10 knots for great results.

Additional features include 6/0 Mustad hooks and a pre-rigged 5′ 130-pound mono. This lure is most effective for catching kingfish, Mahi, sailfish, and green machine tuna.

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4. Dr. Fish Saltwater LED Fishing Squid Lures

The Most Realistic Tuna Lures

Key Features:

• Designed with durable vinyl material to withstand fishing rigors
• Glows in the dark underwater
• Has LED light to attract even huge fish

These lures are made with strong vinyl materials to combat attacks from ferocious species at sea, making them easy to be maintained in good condition even after years of using them for saltwater fishing. The size of these lures is desirable to hook some green machine tuna, marlin, tuna, and kingfish.

Its almost 100% realistic appearance resembles a lifelike squid lure underwater while flaunting its shimmering body to stand out from surrounding fish. In addition, its skin glows in the dark with water-activated built-in LED light as a double attractant when it senses water.

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5. MagBay Lures 6″ Cedar Plug

The Innovative Fishing Lures

Key Features:

• Completely rigged with a 150-pound mono leaser
• With cedar plug to aim for tuna
• Has razor hooks made with stainless steel

This top-tier lure is famous on the East Coast and is ideal for catching various big-game fish. It’s readily and fully rigged, making them one of the ideal lures for angling tuna, fly fishing, trolling, and saltwater fishing.

MagBay Lures are specialized with cedar plugs to resemble the swimming action of frantic baitfish and result in bubbling actions on the surface, making them irresistible to wahoo, green machine tuna, Mahi, tuna, and billfish. These cedar plugs are reliable enough as they have been tested with time.

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6. Shimano Butterfly Flat-Fall Jigs

The Resilient Butterfly Jig

Key Features:

• Designed with hydrodynamic flat keels
• Has dancing stinger hooks
• Great for butterfly jigging techniques

This jig is in addition to the unique dimensions associated with butterfly jigging. It is easy to use by freely spooling these lures to your chosen depth of up to 30 feet while repeating the spooling. Center-balanced jigs can make horizontal wobbling actions, which can be retained longer during strikes compared to other kinds of butterfly jigs.

Because of its weight, you can drop it down easily to the water column base. This is aided by the two dancing stingers, and PowerPro assist hooks.

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7. Nomad Design DTX Minnow

The Ultimate Tuna Lure for Offshore and Inshore Trolling

Key Features:

• With autotune design to achieve maximum depth
• Has strong split rings and BKK hooks
• Featured with advanced technology

This trolling lure is great for fish species such as big salmon, yellowtail, wahoo, and tuna. Its autotune design allows the lure to dive up to the desired depth and to guide the lure as it swims straight. The Diamond Armour and Gorilla Through Wire system provides enough durability to the bait to effectively catch as many fish as it can.

No other accountable lure can dive as deep as this lure. Its durable split rings, together with its treble hooks, make it fiercely ready for any fishing challenge it may face once outside of your tackle box.

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How To Rig Your Tuna Jigs

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How to Catch Tuna

Chunking, jigging, and trolling are well-known offshore fishing methods that are proven to be effective. Aspiring to be an all-around angler can increase your fishing activity’s chances of sustained success.

Chunking

Chunking becomes inevitably deadly for schooling fish when they are situated over underwater ledges and humps and stopover-specific areas.

Tossing baitfish and squid cuts are sure to cause a feeding frenzy in large schools of fish. To ensure success, ensure that the attractive tidbits flow steadily to keep your target nearby and your bait.

Tips for chunking include dropping the bait when tuna refuse to get near your hooked bait. They are more likely to resist 120-pound baits and prefer 60-pound baits.

Jigging

This fishing type is the second butterfly jigging when it comes to popularity.

Choosing the location of highly migratory fish close to your location using a fishfinder, positioning your boat, and dropping jigs that can resemble wounded baitfish near your targets can make this technique most effective.

You will also need to use the specific reels, rods, and lines designed for jigging for the best results.

Tips for jigging include the use of pencil jigs the moment bluefin tuna starts feeding on a bottom sand eel for a sure catch.

Trolling

This is the most commonly used method applied in every fishing activity. Some anglers use fast-phased techniques where the trolling lures range from 10 to 14 knots.

Tips for effective trolling include trolling in zigzag patterns. This will make your strikes more noticeable to tuna whenever you cast your bait.

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Things to Consider When Buying Fishing Lures

The first thing to consider when angling for tuna is the specific type of tuna you want to target. It’s because there are specific lures and gears for every species. Here are other things to consider when buying one.

Fishing Style

You cannot go wrong with having all kinds of lures in your tackle box. Tuna and other big fish can be caught by drift fishing and trolling. However, if you cannot have every kind of lure, you can think of techniques with your lure in possession.

Trolling lures can be helpful while simultaneously thinking if your trolling needs to go faster or slower. Using different lures will be great as it can make room for other fishing options.

It’s recommended to consider both cupped head chugs as they are noisier or bullet heads as they are reflective.

Attraction

It is best to get the most attractive and best tuna lures to fish and make a trial and error of the chosen lure types; ensure that the lures you have chosen have different ways to catch the fish’s attention.

These include noise, flash, and movement. Using multiple lures at a time with your trolling speed can be closer to success compared to using a single lure type.

Target Species

Considering your target tuna before fishing is the best thing to do. You will consider the gears and lures afterward because of the vast different tuna sizes.

It’s obvious that you will need to have large baits and gears when targeting larger fish. It’s also recommended to match your lures and troll speed to your target bigger fish species in the Pacific Ocean.