Why I want to catch a tuna...
I took 1996 off and bummed around Australia and New Zealand. In Australia I carried around and spinning combo that didn’t see much action. Fly fishing for the first time in NZ…….that was like a dream. Back in AU, I had a connection in Darwin. Not knowing a thing about Darwin, I hitched to the Port of Darwin with my trout rod. At the port was a huge commercial dock that towered 40’ to 50’ from the water. There were many people fishing from the dock, most of them Asian. The men had girlfriends or wives jigging flies for live bait. I sat and watched for awhile and saw a few 5-10# mackeral caught on jigs. After a bit, I heard a buzz of excitement, then everyone shouting and pointing. Everyone with bait was frantically baiting up and casting out. Then I saw what everyone was shouting about. A school of tuna was running in! It only looked like a half to a dozen, but they were motoring. They really did looked like torpedoes…..like they were fired from a ship trying to blow up the port. You could feel the buzz as the tuna approached the live bait. BAM! BAM! BAM! Dang that live bait was money! I thought that was so bizarre that tuna were cruising right up to the dock. The fight was unreal…..took forever for those guys to land those fish and they had proper gear. A school would run in about every hour to 90 mins. I hung out at the port for three days, hoping I would not catch a tuna, knowing if I did I would be spooled in three seconds. My hopes were that I would catch an incidental mackeral that would not spool me. No such luck. I asked what the specie of tuna was and was told that they were Australian Bluefin. Never heard of it....but then again, they call Doug Fir "Oregon Pine". They were about the same size as Albacore caught off Oregon…..20# range. It was without a doubt the most exciting fishing I have ever witnessed.
Freak
[ 11-30-2003, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: Freakwater ]
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Freakwater
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