Palm Beach Tuna Tournament expands to two weeks, boosts cash prizes

The Palm Beach Tuna Tournament is ditching the one-hot-day gamble and giving crews 14 full days to hunt yellowfin, bluefin, bigeye and blackfin tuna off the Palm Beaches. That shift matters because the fish and the weather do not line up on command, and this format rewards boats that can keep grinding.

The 2026 tournament runs from April 25 through May 9, with the captain’s meeting set for Friday, April 24 at 6 p.m. at Stormhouse Brewing in North Palm Beach. The West Palm Beach Fishing Club says spring is when large tunas, especially yellowfin, push off Palm Beach County, and the longer window is built around that migration. For crews juggling weather, crew schedules and a bite that can turn off in a day, the extra time changes the math.

The biggest draw is still the money. Any registered boat that lands a qualifying tuna at 40 pounds or more is eligible for a guaranteed $10,000 prize, and total prize money can climb to $20,000. The single heaviest eligible tuna takes the cash, so the tournament still has a bluewater trophy-fish feel. But the club added weekly cash prizes for the three heaviest blackfins, with payouts of $500, $300 and $200, which gives smaller, more consistent fish real value instead of leaving every non-jumbo bite on the dock.

That blackfin angle is the practical twist here. A crew that misses the perfect weather day can still stay in the hunt by fishing multiple windows and targeting a species that is often more accessible than a true trophy yellowfin or bluefin. The club’s rules describe the event as multiple eligible days of fishing for a trophy catch off the Palm Beaches, and that is exactly the point: consistency and local knowledge now matter as much as one long run offshore.

The tournament also builds in a late push with Blackfin Blitz day on Saturday, May 9. Weigh-in runs from noon to 2 p.m. at Sailfish Marina, and the day is free to West Palm Beach Fishing Club members with an optional two-tuna buy-in. For anglers who like a last-day swing, that gives the tournament a second life right at the finish.

There is one more wrinkle worth watching: if no eligible tuna is caught, the payout rolls over to the next year. The rules also note that bluefin eligibility and retention limits may change during the season, and anglers still have to follow state and federal bag-limit and licensing rules. For a club that traces its conservation-and-innovation roots back to 1938, the format feels like a modern answer to a familiar Palm Beach problem: how to keep tournament fishing tough, fair and worth the run.