Theories go out the window as large Yellowfin Tuna arrive off St. Helens
Posted By: Dave Smith
on April 17th, 2007
A sigh of relief was heard across the 27Mhz radio waves yesterday (15th April) as around 6 boats had strikes of Yellowfin tuna on the continental shelf off St. Helens, on a day that was dead flat calm with the exception of a slight sea-breeze and a 1m south-southeast ground swell!
Last weekend was the “Big Fin Sportsfishing” competition and it was a fitting sponsors name for the Yellowfin tuna that were captured.
On Saturday the weather was calm, but not as calm as the Sunday! The Albacore and Stripies were jumping out of the water and some of the Albacore were quite big. Almost every boat had multiple rod hook-ups of small Striped Tuna and Albacore tuna ranging between the 2 to 8Kg mark with a reasonable number of Albacore ranging between the 12 kg and 15Kg with the heaviest gamefish for Day 1 being a 17.6Kg Albacore.
The highlights of Day 1 were a Striped Marlin being hooked and lost after only one minute (bloody things) and the crew aboard “Reload” were unlucky after losing what was suspected to be a large Yellowfin around the 40-50Kg mark after 2 hours: the crew saw one Yellowfin jump out of the water and birds were dive-bombing the water just before another fish hit the lure.
On Sunday (Day 2), the weather was perfect for almost everything else you would normally want to do on a weekend except for gamefishing……well so we thought.
When we left the ramp we thought it was going to be a quite day along with everyone else, but we were all wrong.
News had passed around from Saturday’s fishing and there were a lot of boats down on the Plateau and the surrounding area. We were still setting the lures in position when we had the first the strike, then another, then another. This continued up until the 11 o’clock mark even with such calm seas and a bright blue sky.
After 11am, there was a call across the radio from “Pipe Dream” calling to everyone with their ‘ears on’ that they had seen a couple of large Yellowfin Tuna, around the 50-60Kg mark, jumping clean out of the water. A few boats had ventured down 3miles south of the ‘Plateau’ however only more Striped Tuna and Albacore were caught.
After 12 o’clock and no doubt a few different lures finally some boats had luck with these big ‘fin. There was a time though, when our boat was in the middle of three boats fighting these Yellowfin and “do you think we could hook-up??” Boy, it was frustrating. But that’s how fishing is, as many of you reading this know very well.
With only four out of 12 boats were hooked up, but only two managed to land their fish. One crew lost their fish when they were cut-off on the boat at the most critical stage; another crew lost a fish when the ‘double’ passed through the rod and this caused the knot break and allow the fish its’ freedom. The other crew of “Indecision” managed to land a Yellowfin 44Kg cleaned.
An updated report from Pipeline around 1:30pm, was that they had earlier lost a ‘Fin around the 20Kg mark but were lucky again to have a double hook-up of Yellowfin in which, one rod was broken in two when the fish struck. This left the Skipper’s wife, Melinda, with one hell of a fight on her hands.
Melinda did a most outstanding effort and after about two hours Melinda had the fish within gaffing distance and with much relief, the fish was brought over the gunwale. This fish weighed a mass of 68.8Kg whole and smashed the old TGFA record in the 24Kg Women’s class of 38.6Kg set way back in 1974! Well done, Melinda.
Late in the afternoon, there was a report of a Striped Marlin being hooked-up on the 7-mile mark but unfortunately this fish was lost. As the end of the day drew near a few other boats had arrived in the area in a vain attempt to hook one over these elusive Yellowfin. It was around 4pm and, even though we and other boats were still catching the odd Albacore and Stripy, it was time for all boats to head home.
Hopefully over the next few weeks there will be more of these Yellowfin to be encountered off “the shelf” at St. Helens.
Tight Lines,
Dave Smith
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