Charter
Big game fishing in the Canary Islands: how the fishery works
Big game means fish that can beat you. Marlin, bluefin, bigeye: species that need the right water, the right tackle and someone on board who has done it before.
What makes the Canaries big game water
Deep water very close to land. Around most of the archipelago the bottom falls away to more than a thousand metres within a short run of the coast, which puts genuine offshore species within reach of a day trip.
Add the thermal fronts that form over that structure in summer and you have the conditions that concentrate pelagic predators.
Island wakes: why life concentrates here
This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is what makes the fishery. The Canaries are volcanic mountains rising from around three thousand metres of water. When the current meets them it does not simply flow around: it throws off eddies on the lee side, to the south-west of each island, shedding one after another and sometimes travelling hundreds of kilometres offshore.
The archipelago is in fact one of the best-studied places on earth for this phenomenon. For fishing it matters for one very concrete reason: those eddies hold nutrients, plankton and larvae inside them instead of letting everything disperse. Where there is plankton there is bait, and where there is bait there are eventually predators.
That is why a day here is not about running offshore and searching a thousand metres of water at random. It is about reading where the edge of one of those structures sits, because the fish are not spread evenly: they are on the edges.
The Canary Current and the African upwelling
The Canary Current runs south past the archipelago, the eastern arm of the great North Atlantic gyre. A few dozen miles east lies the African coast and one of the world’s four major upwelling systems: cold, nutrient-rich deep water rising to the surface.
Filaments break away from that upwelling and sometimes reach the eastern islands. When they do, the water turns richer and the bait explodes. It is one reason Fuerteventura and Lanzarote can have a very different season from the western islands in the same year.
Water temperature runs roughly from 18–19 °C in late winter to 23–25 °C in late summer. That thermal swing is what sets the calendar: billfish move in as the water warms, and the deep-water species take over as it cools.
What we target
Blue and white marlin from June through October. Bluefin tuna on the spring migration. Bigeye through the cooler months. Wahoo in autumn, yellowfin and dorado through the warm season, amberjack all year.
What it demands of you
Less than people fear for trolling, more than people expect for a big tuna. We will tell you honestly what a given day involves before you book, and we plan the trip around the group we actually have.
We don't wait for the fish. We follow them.
Tell us when you are coming
Send us your dates and the species you are after. We will tell you honestly what the ocean is likely to be doing.