With the brand new boat run in and never game fished in its life, I decided in March that I was going to commit to catching a South Bluefin Tuna in June/July. I had never caught one before nor did I have any gear what so ever that could really take one on. To add to this I had never done any pelagic fishing from a trailer boat.
I had four months to acquire everything I needed to get the job done if I was lucky enough to hook one and set the boat up with outriggers etc. I literally sold everything I hadn’t used in 6 months and scrapped together what I could to buy second-hand gear and kit the boat out. I studied everything thing I could and found most people were pretty tight lipped on advice so took what little knowledge I had and made a plan.
We teamed up with another experienced boat and had a week booked in which turned out to be too early as the Tuna hadn’t moved in yet so we postponed for 4 weeks. A week out from our revised date we were all set to go with a full crew and two boats. The weather report came through not looking too flash so our crew all pulled out.
Nate and I both have a very weak pull out game and decided we would commit and give it our best shot regardless, Nate is the usual first mate on the boat however he had never game fished before in his life so we were both heading out as green as can be. We left Hamilton at 1600 Tuesday night after work, we stopped at Whakatane to fuel up, grab some ice and groceries. By now it was dark and we began the two hour journey to Waihau, neither of us had ever been further than Opotiki so we didn’t know what to expect.
We arrived in Waihau at 2130 and got settled in ready to go for an early rise in the AM. We woke up to whistling winds and a pretty sad looking forecast so we waited until sunrise for an assessment. We threw the dive gear and Hapuku gear in just in case we couldn’t get out wide. We put the boat in at 0830 and headed wide battling some large swell which seemed to roll different than we are used to but we pushed on and gave the boat a good rinse. Poor Nate was putting down a homemade burly trail over the side but to his credit he man’d up and pushed through like a legend. I found some temperature I was happy with and set the lures and we trolled for a few hours with nothing. I changed tactics went deeper and fund a good temperature change, just as I was went to plot the change we heard a scream on the short rigger. Sure enough the cheapest oldest combo I own was screaming, I thought surely not maybe its just weed as we had seen a lot floating by.
I said to Nate lets treat it as a hook up anyway it’ll be good practice for you with clearing the gear etc. I harnessed up and grabbed the rod still convinced it was weed as it wasn’t fighting like anything I’d fought before. Then the line angle changed and the spool started getting smaller, that was when we knew we were on. Fighting the fish and teaching Nate how to operate the boat while fighting a fish I’d never fought before must of looked hilarious to the birds flying overhead. Nate took to it like a duck in water and we were quickly under control.
Some time passed with some big runs until finally the big death circles under the boat which had us doing some tricky manoeuvres until eventually we saw colour. Nate grabbed the leader and I was able to secure the gaff. The fish was too fat to get through the transom door (design cock up on my behalf), so we positioned the boat side onto the swell and pretty much washed it in over the side. This is where I learnt the hard way that you don’t stand over the fish while its alive.. Fair to say I won’t be making any babies any time soon haha. We made the call to bleed, gut and gill it straight away then put it on ice to preserve the meat as it was a fair haul back to the ramp. We decided we were happy with one and with our rum running low we headed home, by now the conditions were improving and it was an easy going trip home with the hammer down.
She weighed in at just shy of 70kg gutted and gilled with an estimated original weight of 80kg, we were happy with that for our first ever SBT. Everyone we knew was able to have decent slab to try and I ate it 3 times a day for a week.