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The sun has just begun to peek over the horizon on June 29 when Tyler McLaughlin guides his boat, Cartwheel, away from its dock in Mackerel Cove.
The boat’s profile reveals its mission. A 24-foot-tall lookout tower rises above the wheelhouse. From the bow, the pulpit — an aluminum structure made from a sailboat’s mast — extends 20 feet out over the water. At the outermost point, secured to a wire handrail, a harpoon sits ready.
Cartwheel was designed for one purpose. “All it can do is chase tuna with a harpoon,” McLaughlin says.
On the fishing grounds, McLaughlin and a crewmember, Dylan Richards, perch on seats at the top of the tower, where there is a navigation station with engine and rudder controls. Midway up the tower is a seat for the third crew member, Aidan Ramsay.
Richards, who lives in Cundy’s Harbor, is 18 years old. Ramsay, who lives on Bailey Island, is also 18.
Richards is called the wheelman because he drives the boat from the tower while all three scan the water for tuna near the surface. Ramsay is called the spotter. Once a fish is sighted, McLaughlin must scramble down the tower and head for the pulpit. When he reaches the end of the pulpit, he grabs the harpoon and assumes the role of striker, ready to spear a fish.
McLaughlin, 38, has been pursuing tuna since he was a child. As an adult, he gained a national reputation, appearing in more than 250 episodes of the long-running reality show “Wicked Tuna” and a spinoff, “Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks.” In three seasons of “Wicked Tuna” and one season of “Outer Banks,” he was the winning captain.
Those shows involved catching tuna with rod and reel. Harpooning a tuna is a different challenge, and a much more difficult one.
Nothing compares to tuna fishing
On this voyage, Cartwheel was heading south to an area about 25 miles offshore from a point just south of Portland. Cruising at just under 20 mph, it would be a couple of hours before the action began — plenty of time for McLaughlin to help a visitor understand what he was going to witness, and to convey how he, McLaughlin, got so deeply involved in catching tuna.
One thing became immediately clear: Despite McLaughlin’s experience, it would not be easy to find, harpoon and land an Atlantic bluefin tuna. Since the harpoon season had begun four weeks earlier on June 1, McLaughlin had taken Cartwheel out for bluefin five times. During those trips, he had thrown the harpoon just four times. Three times, he missed. But the one fish he struck and landed, on June 10, was a giant, measuring 110 inches and weighing 804 pounds.
His boat is old, a 32-foot Holland built in Maine in 1993. Made for harpooning, it is relatively slow. Its 265-horsepower diesel engine gives it a top speed of about 25 mph. When searching for tuna, he runs it at about 8-13 mph.
Rough at the edges with no creature comforts (the head is a bucket), this is a work boat suited to its task. It’s “a very slippery boat,” McLaughlin said. Its rounded bottom spreads the weight of the boat, giving it a shallow draft and modest drag. The result is a vessel that moves quietly through the water.
The crew removes the engine cover while on the hunt “to let the noise disperse so we can be as sneaky as we can,” McLaughlin said.
As in the days of sailing ships pursuing whales, the crewmembers of Cartwheel rely solely on their vision to spot their quarry. Harpooning a tuna requires that it be at or near the surface. For spotting tuna near the surface, the human eye remains the best tool.
Why would a large tuna spend long periods of time at the surface when, unlike a whale, it doesn’t need to come up to breathe? The answer may be to digest.
In June, the layer of warmer water near the surface is relatively shallow.
“The fish come up to the surface to warm their bodies,” McLaughlin explained. The higher water temperatures help these cold-blooded creatures digest their food, he said.
McLaughlin grew up in Rye, on the New Hampshire coast, where he still works for his family’s fourth-generation moving business. On Bailey Island, he has a camper parked on land adjoining his dock and is building a house there.
His connection to Maine goes back to his youth, and Maine is where his passion for tuna fishing first caught fire.
His father was an avid tuna fisherman who loved to fish in Maine, sometimes competing in tuna tournaments. The younger McLaughlin often came along, and he was soon hooked.
When he was 17 years old, he had his own boat, a 25-foot Mako. Since the fishing was better in Maine than in New Hampshire, he would cruise up there and essentially live on his boat, remaining offshore for weeks at a time.
“I used to sleep out there until I caught a fish,” he said. Sometimes, rather than sleep, he would just fish all night long.
“I had a dodger for cover,” he said. (A dodger is a frame-supported fabric shelter at the bow, usually open to the stern.) “I’d ride out all sorts of weather.”
When he did catch a fish, he would come to Holbrook’s Wharf in Cundy’s Harbor to sell it.
Two decades later, he is still pursuing tuna, mostly for the love of it. The fish he sells just cover his expenses.
“This is really for enjoyment,” he said. “There’s nothing in the world to compare to this. … I live all year for this.”
- Permits for harpooning Atlantic bluefin tuna are issued by NOAA Fisheries, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
- The season opened on June 1 and was scheduled to continue through Nov. 15. However, on July 17, NOAA Fisheries closed the fishery after determining that its quota had been filled.
- In 2026, NOAA Fisheries has issued 30 harpoon permits for Atlantic bluefin tuna.
- Twelve vessels homeported in Maine have harpoon permits.
- As of July 10, Maine vessels had reported landing 76 bluefin tuna.
- The average weight of those Maine fish was 527.9 pounds and the average length was 100 inches.
- Total harpoon landings in Maine came to 40,121.3 pounds.
Source: NOAA Fisheries
Even hard days are good days
At about 7 a.m., the boat slows and the searching begins. McLaughlin has left the helm in the wheelhouse, ascended the tower and taken his seat next to Richards.
About an hour later, Richards announces, “I really smell them.”
McLaughlin, at this point positioned on the pulpit, says he smells them too.
It turns out that tuna lolling near the surface emit a distinct aroma. What causes the smell? “Poop,” Richards says. “Tuna is such a potent smell.”
With Richards steering the boat from the tower, Cartwheel creeps up on a fish visible just ahead. But before McLaughlin can launch the harpoon, the fish dives out of sight.
“He spooked on us,” McLaughlin laments. “I saw him so clear. I should have thrown a half-second earlier.”
An hour or so later, Cartwheel is back among the fish. One is clearly visible, splashing at the surface perhaps 200 yards ahead.
As the boat creeps forward, McLaughlin points his harpoon to help Richards track the fish. Then, at about 9:30 a.m., McLaughlin thrusts the harpoon downward. The line attached to the harpoon goes tight.
McLaughlin begins hauling on the line to take out the slack. The fish, thrashing at the surface, its head visible, rushes along the starboard side of the boat. McLaughlin, now at the stern, shouts, “Hit him! Hit him again!”
The line going to the harpoon head, or dart, can carry an electric current to immobilize the fish. But before that can happen, the fish is gone. The dart has pulled loose.
The hunt resumes. More fish are spotted around 11, then again around noon. Things seem to be heating up.
McLaughlin is back in the pulpit and over a fish. He throws and misses. He thinks he should have hit home. “Screwed the pooch on that one,” he says mournfully.
More fish are spotted at 12:30.
“There they are. They’re starting to mill,” he says of a group of circling fish.
“Welcome to the fishing grounds,” McLaughlin says just after 1 p.m. “They’re all over the place.”
But the boat is unable to get close enough for another throw.
Richards, catching sight of fish, steers the boat in their direction, but once again the fish dive before the boat can get close. “They went down,” he tells McLaughlin. “So skittish,” McLaughlin replies.
That pattern keeps repeating. Fish are spotted. Hopes rise. Fish dive.
After another missed throw, McLaughlin observes, “This is harder than it looks.”
McLaughlin and his crew persist, fishing until the sun is sitting low in the sky.
On the way back in, McLaughlin assesses the voyage.
“It’s a difficult day for harpooning,” he says.
He has thrown the harpoon about seven times, almost twice as many times as he had thrown the entire month since the season had begun.
The main problem, he believes, was that the fish were holding too far below the surface to permit effective harpooning.
He noted that on some of his throws, the butt end of the 10-foot harpoon would go below the surface without contacting the fish. “The pole was disappearing and I still hadn’t hit the fish,” he says. “If their back’s out of the water, you can hit them.”
As the boat nears Bailey Island, McLaughlin breaks out an old propane stove, basically a sheet of metal with raised edges placed over a burner. On it he cooks beef patties and bacon to be served on hamburger rolls.
After a long day outdoors, the burgers are welcome and delicious. Everyone seems in good spirits.
Richards says, “It never gets old. Some days are better than others.” If he had to do it all the time, “It would be alright by me.”
Epilogue
Cartwheel’s drought came to an end on July 5. Its crew brought home a 98-inch, 575-pound fish. Three days later, they struck another, a 110-incher that weighed 780 pounds.
The crew was fortunate to land two tuna in early July, because on July 17, federal regulators closed the harpoon season after determining the quota had been filled.
“They were running real high in the water,” McLaughlin said to explain their success in July.
“We’ve been getting them,” he added. “There are lots of them around.”
As for the seven missed throws on June 29? “That was a real good day, a harpooner’s dream, and I blew it,” he said.
The crew of Cartwheel had demonstrated that harpooning a tuna is not easy. But in the end, persistence pays off. Cartwheel had landed three giant bluefin to prove it.
