I've only been able to hit them when trolling lures. I troll surface lures and anything in a squid or silver pattern and anything green usually works. For diving lures I have seen the red or orange colours work well.

Try and troll across the 30m to 35m even out to 45m. If you head out of Hillarys and hit the 30m line and then turn north west for a few miles and then run south west for a few miles to try and find the bait. Depending on wind direction as well sinces the tuna seem to like hitting surface lures when trolled into the wind or slightly across it.

Big birds sitting on the water are a good indication the bait was in the area as they are digesting and the small turns looking below themselved and turning occasionally usually mean they are also tracking tuna. I've never seen a big flock of actively fishing birds but not to say it can't happen. Best I have seen is the big birds, small turns and mutton birds all working bait and the tuna weren't far away.

I was going to put out a similar post...

I actually don't believe I have "ever" caught anything trawling in WA Metro waters. We are heading out to Rotto from Woodies for a bottom bounce a first light then i would really like to try and get onto some pelagic action on the trawl if possible. Tuna/Mac/Kings.

I imagine we will probably trawl South of Rottnest heading back towards Carnac on the 20-30m edge of the FFB... Probably sitting around 6kts.

Any other suggestions or corrections? I would love to be able to put my oldman onto a tuna!

 BJs little bucktails are lethal, small deep divers etc, twisties etc.

 Did well last weekend catching SBT’s just south of rotto in about 30m. Used small skirts and mid sized halco laser pro’s. Look for the birds diving and you will find them.

Skirts are handy because you can leave them in the water when you are driving at speed to get to the schools. 

 Scored a YT Kingy on the troll heading out from Woodies the other week, was about 1-2kms past Garden Island.

Seemed tyo loved the Rapala X

GO

We tried pretty much everything last year and found that the best luck we had was on 10cm skirts, just cheapies from Compleat Angler or BCF, troll them as fast as you can without them coming out of the water 10-12 knots from memory 

We were finding massive schools south of rotto off the back of 5 fathom in 20-30m

Look for the birds and the tuna will be there

www.bcf.com.au/p/silstar-rigged-xmas-tree-jig-em-rig/M123402.html

Flick rod, 4000 size reel (shimano) 30lb leader and a 30-40 gram metal slice lure. They loved it!

Could have caught plenty more if we were interested, but had plenty for the blokes on board anyway.

Heaps about at the moment

 small skirts work on the trawl as well as shallow divers. when you find the birds work out which way they are mooving and trawl around the front of the school having the lures around 50 to 60 mtrs out back so on the turn the lures will go into the school. the tuna have been flighty so far this year so dont drive too close to the school. got 3 nice ones last trip out .