It was the Sunday before Valentine’s Day and I like most other blokes hadn’t given the 14th of Feb a single thought because I was solely focussed on getting myself a nice feed of delicious SBT. Bobby, Mark and myself eyed off the better conditions in the afternoon. The light southerly paired with a tide change in the afternoon seemed to be the better bite opportunity with the morning having light offshore winds and a plethora of boats heading out. So we decided to wait it out and hoped all the boats would head in once the wind turned and would increase the chances.
We headed out through the Barwon River around 2pm and shot straight out off the bluff in 40m of water. We trolled some skirts around once we found a bit of life and some bait but not a lot was happening and the fish were sitting 25m down and didn’t seem to be coming up. We motored out a bit deeper towards the shipping channel coming into the PPB heads in 65m of water and found some bait high on the surface and tight. We could see the tight orange bait and figured out it was krill balls and underneath you could see the tuna about 25-30m down. However the fish weren’t schooling they seemed to be separated a bit and you would mark only half a dozen or so fish together and they were scattered all through the general area.
Many passes with the skirts out later and still no action and no indication that the fish were keen to come up and have a look we decided it was time to go more stealthy and see if we could bring them up with poppers and floating stickbaits. The tide change had already passed half an hour earlier so decided to kill the engine and start our drift through where we were sounding the fish. The first stickbait I tied on was a Reef Thief floating 60g in bubblegum colour (pink and purple). After a few casts I had a few big swirls behind the lure and knew it wouldn’t be long before we would have the reels screaming.
Next cast a big swirl and then bang! A decent school fish estimated 25kg smashed my lure on the surface and came out of the water. Reel started screaming and so did I! It had a few good runs and once we had the fish under the boat circling I passed the rod back to Bobby as I was up the front casting off the nose of the boat, the fish rolled and line went slack and hooks fell out! We were gutted. Not to worry we knew there would be more. I got straight back up the front and continued casting and it would only be 2 casts later when I had a big splash and saw a big white belly out of the corner of my eye and my rod was buckled again. The fish was really erratic and changed directions a few times before dumping half of my spool in a massive run before pop! Snipped… I think with the way it ran and the tail beats it could’ve been a mako that’s took the stickbait, not uncommon to have makos amongst the tuna as you’re about to find out!
I went back to the tackle box and didn’t have any more stickbaits in the same colour except for a new design we plan on releasing at a later date. The popper was tied on and cast straight back into the action. 10 mins later the go pro running and back after two pops I hooked up yet again, the tuna had a few decent runs but I knocked it over and had the fish on board in 5 mins. A decent school fish estimated at 20kg.
After brain spiking, bleeding and gutting and gilling this fish and hosing down the deck we had quite a nice berley trail off the back of the boat when I looked over to wash the hands and noticed a dark blue back all excited at the back of the boat. A decent Mako shark had showed up and after some mad scrambling to find a wire trace and a nice fresh slice of tuna tail we also had a mako on board and on ice!
We continued to catch some more school tuna for the afternoon all on top water before we decided it was time to head in.
Lessons learnt
Change it up! If something isn’t working try changing tactics, boat noise and traffic often will push tuna down and sometimes you need to kill the engine and try a bit more of a stealthy approach. Trust your sounder, trust your knowledge. We knew there was fish down there and it was just a matter of being able to get them interested and up to the surface. Tying something like a floating stickbait or popper to create a bit of a familiar splash and disturbance on the surface to get them interest. Tuna are pelagic and have very good eyesight and are lightening fast. Even if the fish are 40m down deep they will hear and see the splashes on the surface and with a couple of beats of their tail they will be up at the surface and ready to crunch your stickbaits. So don’t always just cast your stickbaits when the fish are “busting up” try casting around tern’s and mutton birds because they’re there for a reason and the tuna will be underneath them!
Kaiden Long
Reef Thief
