Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Southern Bluefin Tuna, Kingies, Marlin and other game fish.
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ncr1
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Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by ncr1 » Tue May 02, 2017 1:13 pm

Hey all,

I’m currently recovering from my transplant (which has gone well so far), meaning that I’ve got quite a bit of time on my hands. I’ve been eagerly reading the tuna reports from Portland wishing that I could be part of the action. But alas, that will have to wait until next year.

I’ve been incredibly lucky with the opportunities I’ve been given to fish for Bluefin tuna of the south-west coast over the past ten years. Before I moved to Melbourne, I had lived in Warrnambool for a number of years and have a good friend who has the boat, equipment and flexibility at work to chase the SBT on a semi-regular basis. At the time, I was also lucky enough to have the same flexibility during the working week and was able to join him as a regular deckie on his boat (along with another mate). We began fishing for tuna off Portland in 2006 and like most fishos at the time, we didn’t have much of a clue what we were doing. Since those early days, I estimate that I’ve been a deckie on his boat for at least 60-70 outings and needless to say, we experienced some amazing tuna action over these trips. In fact, I can honestly say that there has only been one single trip where we failed to land a tuna, whereas we bagged out on SBT in probably about two-thirds of those trips with fish ranging from 6kg to 132kg (we didn’t always keep our bag though). We were truly spoilt, but we worked hard, did a lot of research, asked a lot of questions, and learnt a lot over that time.

So while I’m sitting at home recovering, I thought I would share a number of things that I’ve learnt from this time to hopefully give others a better chance of getting into the action. There’s a lot to get through so I’ll write it up in sections, posting as I go. But since writing takes time, you might have to wait a little while between posts.

ncr1
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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by ncr1 » Tue May 02, 2017 1:15 pm

A Brief History

Prior to the 2006 season, tuna fishing along the south-west coast was very hit-and-miss and there were only ever a handful of boats that would spend time seriously targeting bluefin. If tuna were to be caught, most were landed out of Port MacDonnell and were generally only school-sized fish. Tuna frames at the Portland ramp would have likely been a real oddity.

But a group of local anglers fishing off the shelf at Port Fairy in April 2006 started everything off when one lucky guy returned with an 80kg+ barrel. Obviously, news of this capture quickly flew around the internet and social media, but many people at the time thought that it was just a lucky one-off. However, a number of switched on locals decided to do some further exploration in the days following and going by the reports coming in soon after from those lucky anglers who were involved, the following weeks of fishing were one of the most intense periods of big barrel tuna fishing that anyone has ever experienced. Among the small flotilla of boats exploring offshore at Portland and Port Fairy at the time, reports of massive schools of 100kg+ tuna free jumping out of the water around the boat were consistently reported. Many were hooked, most were lost, but there were also dozens of big barrels landed during this period. I remember reading the reports at the time (while I was stuck on land) and being blown away. This gamefishing bonanza had just come from nowhere – surely this was just a freak occurrence and won’t be repeated!

By memory, the craziness of the 2006 season had subsided by May or early June with only the very occasional report of a barrel hookup still filtering through the grapevine. There was also a few school-sized fish being caught. It was roughly around this time that our crew finally got our bums into gear and had our first expedition out of Portland. We trolled a long, long way that day and by early afternoon it looked like we were going to register our first donut. But we were saved by a 20kg bluefin that seemed to pop up out of nowhere. It was no barrel, but it was still very exciting to get one on the board. It seemed that the tuna reports dried up completely after that day and we didn’t bother making another trip that year – time to pack up the gear for the winter and hope that the tuna would be back in 2007.

Fast forward to March 2007, and our crew was pretty keen to find out whether the tuna had returned. Back then, the tuna season was generally considered to be between April and July, so when we launched the boat at Port MacDonnell in early March, we didn’t have a great deal of confidence. I remember at the time that the boat ramp carpark was almost empty, except for the fleet of local crayfishermen who were launching their small tender boats.

It was a relatively calm day, so we headed straight towards the shelf. We got out there and started trolling, but there weren’t any signs of fish – no birds and no bait on the sounder, and of course, we were the only boat out there. After about two hours of trolling along edge of the shelf, we heard that great sound of the line snapping off the outrigger and then the howl of line peeling off the reel. This was quickly followed by two other rods screaming off. Triple hookup!

The three of us each grabbed a rod and started the fight while trying to clear the other couple of lines. The rod I had grabbed was a basic 15kg gummy shark rod and only a couple of seconds after I picked the rod up, the fish decided to charge towards the back of the boat. I wound like crazy to pick up the slack, but then the fish changed direction and bolted towards the ocean floor at a great rate of knots. It must have only torn off 20-30 metres of line on this run before everything went slack. The line had snapped above the double. The drag was set well, so I blamed some bad rigging or bad maintenance.

The other two were still hooked up, both on 24kg tackle. But after only five minutes, the fish our captain was fighting had spat the hook. Down to one hookup now. Fortunately, this one stayed solid and my mate settled in for the fight. About twenty minutes into the fight, we all looked at each other an agreed that this was a much bigger fish than just a schoolie. Our suspicions were confirmed about an hour later when we saw the fish up on the surface about 200 metres out the back of the boat – it was a definitely a big barrel and because it was so close, we naively thought the fight would be over soon! But then the fish dived deep and it we didn’t see it again for another three hours.

I think my mate on the rod was on the edge of cardiac arrest when we finally worked out on an effective approach to ‘plane’ the fish up from the depths with the boat. Metre by metre of line was retrieved over the next hour until we finally saw the flash of silver below. You could hear our jaws drop in unison as we first saw the fish nearing the surface. As we sunk the first gaff in, we almost stood still in shock as we began to comprehend the size of this beast. After a four-hour fight, my mate was completely gone and therefore it was up to me and the captain to drag the fish over the side. That was no easy task. But eventually the huge lump of silver landed on the floor and high fives were shared all round.

We had a couple of contacts at the local gamefishing club, so we were able to call ahead for a set of scales to weigh our catch. Apparently the club was also keen on publicizing their local fishing grounds to the wider community and had arranged for a local television crew to meet us at the ramp. The fish tipped the scales at 132kg and at the time, it was one of the biggest southern bluefin tuna caught by a recreational angler in recent memory anywhere in Australia. It was also bigger than any of the barrels caught during the 2006 season. And because it was still unsure whether the events of 2006 would be repeated, news of the first barrel of the 2007 season generated a hell of a lot of excitement among the gamefishing community. Video of our tuna being hoisted from the boat even made a brief appearance on the Channel Ten late night national news a couple of nights later.

The 2007 season ended up being a subdued version of 2006 in regards to the numbers of barrels caught. The barrels were there and being caught, they just weren’t in the same numbers as the year before. However, there were stacks of school fish between 15-30kg mixed in with some nice big albacore. We had a great year on these smaller models, bagging out on nearly every trip. It was incredibly good fishing at times.

Of course, we now know that seasons 2006-07 were not just a passing phase, and that a whole new gamefishery had kicked off along the south-west coast that is still going on today. Barrels are certainly no longer considered a rare capture, and many much bigger fish than our 132kg model have been weighed in since then. It’s now hard to remember Portland before it was hit by tuna fever.

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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by Wolly Bugger » Tue May 02, 2017 1:40 pm

ncr1 wrote:Hey all,

So while I’m sitting at home recovering, I thought I would share a number of things that I’ve learnt from this time to hopefully give others a better chance of getting into the action. There’s a lot to get through so I’ll write it up in sections, posting as I go. But since writing takes time, you might have to wait a little while between posts.
That is fantastic, and thank you for doing it. I will make this topic sticky.

Hope you are well and have a speedy recovery.

purple5ive
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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by purple5ive » Tue May 02, 2017 1:50 pm

wow that was an interesting read indeed, i always though tuna and portland went hand in hand, so its only been 10 years or so that tuna have been regularly caught in Portland.
Thanks for sharing
cheers

stesslmatt
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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by stesslmatt » Tue May 02, 2017 2:00 pm

Magic read and looking forward to the rolling storey. Great thing to do when forced layup for you.

Matt

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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by Lightningx » Tue May 02, 2017 2:19 pm

Great read indeed! Thanks for sharing :P

ncr1
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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by ncr1 » Tue May 02, 2017 2:33 pm

Changing Times

Since the 2006-07 seasons, it has been common to question whether a) these huge runs of tuna have always been there and just haven’t been uncovered/targeted properly in previous seasons, or b) whether these increased migrations of fish are a new phenomenon driven by more favourable environmental conditions, less pressure from commercial fishing, or any of the other infinite and unknown factors.

We will almost certainly never know the answer for sure. However, in my personal view, I would lean more towards option b). Afterall, if the fish were there in the same abundances as previous seasons, I believe it would be very hard for any recreational angler to avoid them. In recent years, you can go for a coffee at the lighthouse café at Cape Nelson and consistently watch birds hammering the water with tuna jumping all around. Further down the coast, I have seen big schools of tuna busting up just a few hundred metres from the Warrnambool breakwall. If this were in the 90s and early 2000s, similar sightings would attract huge interest and excitement from the recreational fishing community. Nowadays, these sightings are a relatively common occurrence.

I also believe that more tuna fisheries are being discovered simply because of the increased number of boats that are trying for them (and because some are better equipped and more adventurous as well). Back in 2006/07, the vast amount of serious tuna hunting was done at Portland or Port MacDonnell, with most boats heading out wide to the shelf (unless they found birds working in closer). However since then, a combination of more widespread schools of fish and more boats looking for them has likely extended the range of locations where SBT are seriously targeted (big SBT at Phillip Island – WTF?!). Having barrels being brought into Hastings to be weighed was completely unthinkable a few years ago.

The assumed duration of the annual SBT season has also been shaken up in recent years. As I mentioned in the previous post, it was not that long ago when the ‘normal’ SBT season was considered to be between April to July. These days, it seems that they can be caught all year around, with some recent memorable runs of barrels happening in the springtime.

It’s also interesting to compare the epicenter of activity, Portland, and how the fishing has changed there in the past decade. Back when we first started out, a ‘standard’ trip out of Portland meant almost always travelling to the shelf. Because my friend’s boat only had a two-stroke outboard at the time, this meant we would also have to carry extra jerry cans of fuel onboard to be able to clock up enough kilometres. We would consistently use 200-300 litres of fuel per trip! But now, it seems that there is a much smaller proportion of boats that make the journey to the shelf and many more that are happy to focus their efforts closer to shore.

Again, that brings up the question from those early days, whether we were naively bypassing big schools of SBT inshore while we burnt huge amounts of fuel searching for them out wide on the shelf? I feel that at the time we were all very alert to the signs of feeding schools of tuna, and there didn’t seem to be the same level of activity in close during those days, at least in comparison to what there is today. But I could be wrong.

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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by Nude up » Tue May 02, 2017 3:07 pm

Great read keep it up. One of my mates had a kidney transplant that failed he was at deaths door but got another one and now he is back at work doing shift work he is in his early fifties and hard to keep up with.

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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by Mattblack » Tue May 02, 2017 3:29 pm

Fantastic read....it's your fault I'm going to miss a deadline for work

barra mick
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Re: Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

Post by barra mick » Tue May 02, 2017 4:58 pm

Fantastic read !!!!

Cheers bm

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