To Catch a Blue Fin Tuna - Part 1

They are literally the most prized fish in the sea. Every year in Japan some bluefin tuna sell at auction for more than a million dollars. Low and behold, I’d heard word in a fishing shop here in New Zealand that they might make an appearance during winter! 

Conservation

Upfront let me say that I am aware of the conservation status of bluefin tuna. There are some nuances though. There are three distinct populations of bluefin tuna in the world: atlantic, northern pacific and southern. These populations do not mix as land and sea temperatures barriers keep them corralled in their respective parts of the world. The Atlantic populations were indeed listed as endangered by the IUCN in 1996. This spurred the development of catch quotas in order to sustainably manage the stock. By 2009 the ICCAT had set rules on total allowable catch, minimum sizes, bycatch requirements and of course recreational fisheries. Today, the Atlantic stock which was the most threatened bluefin tuna stock is recovering although it has a long way to go and the work to keep the population on a path to growth will never be over.

In New Zealand, the bluefin tuna are part of the southern bluefin tuna population. These tuna range all the way from the Indian Ocean to the south pacific in search of food to pack on the pounds. While this population has also been heavily fished, this population is also the healthiest of the three BFT populations. In 1994, the three major nations (Aus, NZ, Japan) involved in fishing SBFT (southern blue fun tuna) formed a convention to jointly manage the fishery. The convention named the CCSBT (Commission for the Conservation of Southern Blue Fin Tuna) meets twice yearly to manage international catch limits to both grow the SBFT population as well as provide commercial and recreational opportunities. Since the lowest point in the year 2000 the SBFT population has approximately tripled. As a participant in the CCSBT Commission, New Zealand sets recreational fishing limits of one SBFT per angler per season. So, with management, the tuna population here in the south has been growing and with us and the many other anglers both recreational and commercial playing ball with New Zealand’s policies, we should continue to see the population grow.

Preparation:

So, when the catch reports started to roll in in late June of people catching anything from 80lb to 320lb bluefin tuna right in Zephyr’s backyard, I began preparing right away.

Never mind that it was mid winter. 

Never mind that it was wet out. 

Never-mind that we were just past the darkest days of the year. 

Zephyr’s 2020 bluefin tuna quest was going to happen. This was the adventure that my soul needed after having Zephyr’s plans to head to Fiji this year stymied by the global pandemic. 

Previously crossing the pacific, I’d almost always fished with handlines from Zephyr but this presents some problems when fishing for massive tuna. The first is that their mouths are not particularly hard unlike some marlin. Big tuna also tend to rip off of hand-lines. I suspect in many cases this would be fatal for the tuna so ethically it probably isn’t the right choice if you are specifically targeting them. Even if they do manage to stay on, their wide barrel like bodies create an intense amount of drag that is likely to break gear. 

For this mission we needed the right tools for the right job. Landing sea monsters is no joke.

In this case, that meant getting some comically large fishing rods for a sailboat. I stopped in at the “Saltwater Connection” in Whangarei which I cannot recommend enough and they set me up! Zephyr is now equipped with not one but two lever drag Taigra 80W reels mounted on carbon fiber bentbutt fishing rods equipped with 2km of 130lb test braided line with about 100M of 130M monofilament topshot on top of that. Finally there is about 10m of 300lb test monofilament wind-on leader. It wasn’t cheap but even if we managed to land a single good sized bluefin tuna on these rods, they would have paid for themselves. 

The nice thing with this setup is that the Tiagra 80Ws reels, the drag can be set as high as 37kg. While you would not want this when fighting a big fish, it will come in handy when you hook a small fish and don’t want to stop the boat. You can simply tune the drag up and plane a little mahi mahi or tuna instead of going through the ordeal of stopping the boat and pulling sails down.

The bentbutt rods are also a game changer on Zephyr. Used with vertical fishing rod holders, you can simply leaving the fishing rod in the holder and crank on the reel without needing to put your back into it or put yourself at risk. Because the rod is bent, it simply aligns to where the fish is. We are meat fishing after all, not sport fishing.

Finally: lures.

Before leaving on the trip, I received a targeted ad on social media from a company called Zactak lures. No doubt my search history was probably filled with various fishing keywords. The video was simply of the action of their lure that they call the “thunderstruck”. The video showed what looked like some amazing action! I thought to myself, that if I were a fish, I’d bite that. I bought a few that arrived just in time before we left. 

Zephyr was setup and well prepared for this quest!

A Brief Vacation: 

Joining on the quest was Aaron (US), who I’d met in Raiataea French Polynesia and had been boat hitchhiking for quite a while. Amanda (US), who originally flew in from Hawaii to join Zephyr on the previous plan of sailing up to Fiji, Marty (NZ) who had reached out to me on Crewbay before and his girlfriend Dixie (NZ).

In total, we had three goals:

1 - Catch a bluefin tuna

2 - Catch enough blue fin tuna to fill Zephyr’s freezers

3 - Catch a 100kg tuna (heavier than any of us)

I joked before we left that there was a good chance that we might all be tired of winning by the end of this. 

No one believed me. 

I’m not even sure I believed me.

Deep sea fishing is notorious for being boom or bust. Marty in particular had been on a few missions here in NZ to catch marlin without success. He was privately skeptical but down for a mid-winter adventure. Like many folks in New Zealand he doesn’t often spend winter here and his plans to leave the country had also been disrupted by the global pandemic. 

We were 5 of us on board total. Leaving from Whangarei we headed out to Great Barrier Island (GBI) for a brief stop first. We only had 48kts of wind so it was pretty quick sail! The average boat speed was easily about 12kts with a few surfs to 18kts. This was under the Genoa alone so pretty low stress despite the chaotic conditions. 

Arriving at great barrier, we waited for the weather to settle down a little bit and then took full advantage of a few days we had of no wind. On the backside of GBI is a small island called “Arid” island where we stopped into for a bit of leisure. As we were sailing around the backside of Great Barrier, Marty looked at one particular spot on the cliffs and mentioned that there were probably Paua (NZ’s famous black footed abalone and crayfish (lobster) under those cliffs. He’d never been to Great Barrier so this was just a hunch based on years of experience gathering seafood from NZ waters. Those cliffs just looked “right”. 

He wasn’t wrong. We caught more Paua and crayfish than we could handle. 

We were already winning the seafood harvesting game before we even started fishing for tuna! 

The sun was shinning and the meals were epic. Life was good aboard Zephyr in our brief glimpse of summer we had in those few days in early July.

Two big ol’ boxes of delicacy

Southbound to the fishing grounds!

When the wind filled in from the north we set sail around mid day to head south to the tuna fishing grounds. I’d scavenged reports from various sources and gathered intel about where the most likely spots to catch tuna would be. East of Tauranga in the bay of plenty lays “east cape”. I knew in general that bluefin were being caught in the area and looking at the charts, I made some educated guesses at where they were likely to be caught. A huge shelf runs along the coast there were the water drops from 200ft deep to thousands of feet deep. If you’ve got to take a guess at where to catch fish, it always makes sense to look at the interface between two environments, ie, the edge of something. The plan was to sail overnight to white island (the volcano that erupted and killed 21 people 8 months ago) and then follow the continental shelf towards east cape in the hope of hooking up!

We sailed downwind overnight, slowing the boat down so that we woke up next to white island. As the skipper I was only woken up once by Amanda who politely informed me that we’d lost steerage. Not exactly what you want to hear at 5AM in the morning.

Looking in the steering compartments where the rudders and hydraulic steering rams are located, it took me about 5 seconds to diagnose the issue. Hydraulic fluid was everywhere. A brass compression fitting had ruptured from the pressure and had spilled most of the vital fluid. Without fluid in the system, neither the wheel or autopilot would be able to move either rudder. They would basically flop around aimlessly. I was sitting on the transom in my underwear at 5AM in some big seas trying to work out what the best way to fix the failure of a key system was. This is real boat life.

Not a pretty sight no matter the circumstances

Covered in hydraulic fluid,  I set to work making a repairing the brass fitting and with Amanda’s help we were able to rebuild and reprime the hydraulic steering in about 45 minutes. Despite the setback, I was pretty proud at how quickly we were up and running again. By the time I was done it started to get light out. It was fishing time!

FISH ON!

We were right next to white island. A smoldering offshore volcano with steam constantly pouring out of it. I could smell the sulfur. No doubt, the eruption which happened only 8 months prior and killed 21 was on our minds.

It was a wild place. The smoldering volcano. The grey overcast on top of a disturbed sea at first light in the morning. I dipped my foot in the water……it definitely felt warm. Was this the volcano’s doing?

Dolphins took up the bow which was indeed a good sign. Perhaps they were enjoying the volcano heated waters as well.

My mind was just turning to coffee when one of the rods started going off.

FISH ON!

It hadn’t even been 30 minutes since we started fishing.

Marty jumped out of bed and onto the rod. Whatever was on the other end of this rod was definitely a game fish bigger than a skipjack tuna! We stopped the boat and let the fish run a few times before cranking her in. Even though the fish on the other end of this rod was big, our rods and reels were meant for bigger.

Perhaps 10 minutes later and we were putting the gaff in a chunky tuna!

We did it! We landed a blue fun tuna! Stoke level was very high indeed! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of more stoked fisher-people.

But something wasn’t quite right. This tuna was big, perhaps 20kg, but not that big. There was also something distinctly familiar about it. I’d caught an albacore tuna before in the north pacific but wasn’t aware that they might be down here as well. This tuna did indeed look a lot like the albacore I’d caught before.

We sailed on stoked but also in a bit of limbo. We debated what our prize might be and outside of cell service, we were unable to confirm what we’d caught. 

That afternoon though we got our second bite, and boy……did we feel silly thinking that that little guppy was a bluefin!

To be continued in part2