THE THRILL OF A JUMBO IN FULL FLIGHT
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As a professional charter boat Captain and a fisherman spanning 55 years, it has been most sad to see the demise of the bluefin tuna, orange roughey, gemfish and now the yellowfin tuna stocks. All those species have been reduced to danger levels by badly managed commercial fishing. The Federal and State governments have much to answer for in neglecting our fisheries through extremely bad management. In my relatively short lifetime of fishing I have seen stocks depleted.
This article may serve to draw everyone's attention to the seriousness of overfishing Mother Ocean.
"The tuna must have been something else, back when you were young?" someone asked. I have thought often about that question and whilst I am not quite prehistoric yet, I have fished for the tuna as a professional for a little longer than I prefer to remember my answer to that question is "Yes! The fishing was fabulous in the '70s, but we were not very talented fishermen then; the tackle wasn't like it is today, boats had a compass and very little else, no temp. gauges, no sounders and no-one to ask for advice, because they knew about as much as we did, so we were really mugs when compared to the modern day fisho."
Despite all of that we caught some remarkable tuna.
THE 70'S AND BEYOND
My fondest memories of my introduction to yellowfin tuna were the Narooma trips in the '70s. That area turned on some pretty amazing tuna fishing back then. Commercial pressure on our yellowfin tuna stocks was nil. There was no market for yellowfin in Australia other than for cat food. No-one would eat raw fish hell no, it was disgusting! So much so, that I recall taking an 87-kg tuna to the Fisherman's Co-Operative at Nowra with a mate, we had caught the fish at the Sir John Young Banks and decided to send it to the Sydney markets, only to be told by the buyer, "If you blokes want a bill for the transport of that yellowfin you'll leave it here, 'cause that's all you'll get from us!"
No-one wanted yellowfin tuna, other than the family cat Enter the Japanese, who, all of a sudden, realised that if they didn't eat half a kilo of raw tuna a day, washed down with a cup of snake bile lashed with ground rhino horn, they may possibly shrivel up and die. That was the start of a commercial tuna industry, the bluefin had all but disappeared. Local commercial fisherman knew that by sending tuna to Japan in a jumbo jet we could ensure our Pacific neighbours were able to maintain their much-needed diet of sashimi.
We are such a kind and caring race at times Of course, there would be a small cost involvedthe demise of our Pacific Ocean stocks of tunabut what the heck, we'll all get rich in the meantime!
I would like to relate the following story: it is about one of many great days we had on the yellowfin in that early erathe sad part of it is that many of the younger readers of this yarn may never experience the thrill of a big yellowfin tuna this account is about one of so many days we had prior to the advent of commercial long-lining.A JUMBO IN FULL FLIGHT
ARE THE GLORY DAYS GONE?
It was one of those superb June days off Sydney in the '80s, the sort of day that sticks in one's memory forever We awoke to a light west wind, it was chilly, but not worth complaining about, the air had a dryness to it that stung our nostrils when we breathed. Each exhalation left a mist of vapour floating in the still morning air a light fog mist hung over the river.
At the wharf we loaded Broadbill with boxes of pilchards. The yellowfin had been excellent through the week, the big boys were in close and it was champagne fishing, so our hopes were high that the fish would still be there. It's always inspirational when you've have had a good week, sort of takes the effort away from the loading chores we were keen to get that first bait in. With everything stowed, I hit the start buttons and the two turbo Cummins broke the serenity of the morning as they throbbed into life Easing the throttles down, the tachos read 2200 rpm as I eased back. At 21 knots, Broadbill's 38-foot catamaran hull revelled in the superb conditions, making the run across Botany Bay most pleasurable. Time was spent rigging gear, leaders tied and the pillies cut into quarters, ready for cubing. A hot coffee served to charge the human battery for the day ahead.
The Peak is a seamount, five nautical mile nor'-east of the heads. On arrival, we ran the sounder over the area; it showed some good bait schools on the north, so the reef pick was dropped. We anchored next to Mary Anne, a commercial tuna boat. Craig Tooker was her skipper and a friend; he was one of a couple of professional tuna fishermen out of Sydney who fished the yellowfin on rod and reel, making a reasonable living at the Peak. Broadbill lurched a little as the reef pick grabbed, that was a good sign, it meant the current was still trickling to the south at around 1.5 knots. This was perfect for good tuna fishing. I glanced at the temp. gauge, which confirmed 19 degrees Celsius: the scene was set, everything was looking good, but would the tuna agree!! By 5 pm that mystery would be solved.
It was the early heady '80s and yellowfin tuna were the flavour, every sportfisherman who could pull on a rod was wanting to catch them and there were plenty to go around. A juvenile black-browed albatross flew by, looking very elegant in his grey neck plumage. He spotted a pillie cube and instinctively dropped one wing to bank around for another look. "How can those wonderful birds glide so close to the surface of the sea, yet never touch it?" I thought as I cut up a swag of pilchards.
Then the big fella arrived, the giant of them all, the wandering albatross. They have the widest wingspan of all birds. "This is real good," I thought, "Albatross travel only five mile out from shore; that means bait a'plenty, not too far away." The albys feed on squid, sauries, bellows fish and cuttlefish, and, coincidentally, so do yellowfin tuna. The wanderer checked out the cube trail and in a picture of grace and beauty bid us farewell as he continued on his endless journey. I watched him soar until he disappeared I could watch those masters of flight all day; they are the signatures of Mother Ocean.
I had heard stories about albys becoming caught on long-lines, a new form of fishing that was starting to become popular with some of the east coast commercial fishermen. While they were in the infancy of their development, there were a lot of deep water trawlers undergoing refits, converting to the long-line yellowfin tuna industry.
Those early long-liners were setting four miles of mono-line and running a thousand hooks, because they were mostly new chums into the tuna industry, a lot of them ex-trawler men. There were some pretty wet-behind-the-ears tuna fishermen amongst them. They would steam around the ocean, looking at their temp. gauges and the bird life around them and make a decision to shoot away and give it a go, a sort of suck it and see method. For the half-dozen long-liners that worked the tuna regularly, I couldn't see the yellowfin being knocked around too much or, so I thought then.
As I looked into the blue current at the transom of Broadbill, I noticed the sparklers in the waterthat was exciting. I've never had a bad day when the ocean is full of that microscopic plankton, which sparkles iridescently in the sunlight. We worked two rods and constantly fed cubed baits down the slick for 100 metres, then retrieved and repeated with a fresh pillie. We didn't have to wait long before the proverbial hit the fan. The power of an 80-kg yellowfin tuna on his first burst of panic, having realised that the pilchard that he just eat which tasted so good had a hook in, it is always a great experience for any angler.
I am privileged to have experienced that sound many times in those early days when tuna roamed the Tasman Sea with little commercial pressure.
We knew from the first run that a big tuna had taken a pilchard 20 metres from the transom, leaving a boil in the ocean's surface like a depth charge. We quickly dropped the anchor buoy and reversed after the fish, which by this stage had started to run deep and had a considerable amount of 24-kg line off the big Shimano. There was always an air of excitement surrounding the first 20 minutes on a "Jumbo"; after that it really became a gut-busting seesawing game of win or loose. After an hour or so we won, as a fish of 78 kg was boated. We steamed back to the anchor buoy and continued to cube. Within 20 minutes we were chasing another tuna which, when boated, weighed 84 kg.
We went back to the dan buoy again and repeated the process. The old Furuno FE500 sounder ticked away, showing a good school of kingfish under us. I grabbed the old faithful Polikansky from the rackI had bought it in the '70s and used it as a kingfish jigging reel, it was okay for that. I dropped the jig almost to the bottom, and as I cranked it back up 10 metres or so it was smacked by a kingfish with truck loads of aggression. Kingys at the Peak were almost taken for granted and as I wrestled with this big bull-headed bugger he reminded me who was the boss; nevertheless, after 15 minutes he joined the two tuna in the fish box.The boys had a jig and they caught one each, which they tagged and released. I quite enjoy the power of those big kingfish. They were all about the 18 to 20 kg mark on the "old mate Poly" loaded with 15-kg linethey were great sport.
Things had gone a little quiet on the tuna front, not that there were any complaints, so I popped a jig down for one more kingy yellowfin will eat a jig, as I had just found out. My jig was devoured by one 70-kg yellowfin; this would test the tackle in every way, not to mention the boofhead on the end of it. I struggled with that old Butterworth jig rod as it constantly rolled off its backbone with the power of that big tuna. When I was a little fellow and got impatient when the fish weren't biting too well, my old grandfather told me:"Good things come to those who wait."
After two hours of waiting, grunting, cursing and swearing, I boated the tuna . That night as we steamed back to port, enjoying a scarlet winter sunset, we all agreed as we sipped a coldie that it doesn't get too much better than that. Three big yellowfin, a stack of kings, and a glorious winter day fishing off Sydney. The point that I have endeavoured to make in this story is that I can look back to those glory days from the mid '70s to 1990 and to today, and surely that gives me a little credibility. Although I am no Rhodes Scholar, every year I spend more than 200 days chasing the old piscatorial mates around the ocean. I have fished for tune in every popular port from Bermagui in the south, to Pt Stephens, to Cairns in the north. My job is that of a professional charter boat owner/skipper who has made a living from catching and releasing marlin in the summer and tuna in the winter.
There' a lot to understand about the ocean and its inhabitants. I have been around a while and have served about half my apprenticeship, there is still so much more to learn the one thing that I do have over the so-called decision makers is hands-on experienceand that's where my observations come from. Those are some of the brutal facts why I feel that if we don't do something about the current situation our up-and-coming enthusiasts will not ever have the pleasure of experiencing:
A Jumbo in full flight.
THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT WE HAVE REDUCED LONG LINING IN AUSTRALIA TO 15 VESSELS. THANKS TO OUR GOVERNMENT'S BUY BACK SCHEME ...WE TOO HAVE OUR 200 MILE INTERNATIONAL EXCLUSION ZONE ...SO THINGS ARE LOOKING GOOD FOR A RETURN TO THOSE "GLORY DAYS DOWN UNDER"
GOOD LUCK DOING THE SAME IN USA
CAPTAIN ROSS HUNTER