queensland Longtail 1/3/15

[samsteele115]

Sunday was a good day. Not only because I landed my first longtail tuna from the last 9, (yes, 9) that I have hooked, but for being the first of the season for me and also getting Murray onto his first 'big fish' on a lure. Make that 2.

Murray was kind enough to lend me his polycraft over the Christmas holidays so it was only fair that I try to get him onto a bucket list item of his and target some tuna.

It was a slow start from dawn as we couldn't raise a fish off any of the beacons and it wasn't until about 8am that I saw the first sign of surface action in the distance whilst spinning slugs at a beacon.

The next 3 hours were spent chasing whitewater mayhem. I was driving so I could talk Murray through the basics of approaching a school, so hopefully he picked up a couple of things and can do it all again next time .

He hooked up first and before he could say 'it doesn't feel like a big fish' it woke up and gave him some curry! After a brutal 10 minutes the fish was landed and I have never seen a bloke so happy! We were both stoked.

It was my turn next and this was the hardest fighting longtail I have ever hooked with two massive runs. It was nuts. I checked the drag on my Stradic 5000 at the end of the fight and I seriously reckon I was running about 8kg of drag for the back half of the fight. 20 mins and he was in.

We decided to give it another half an hour and soon found ourselves in range of absolute tuna chaos. Murray hooked up again and I somehow only got a single hit on a 7" surface rigged plastic.

This fish fought harder than his first and eventually got it under control after 20 minutes. After a couple of quick photos Murray speared him back into the drink so he could go join his mates. This was the biggest fish of the day about 15kg.

I caught my fish on a 5" jerk shad and Murray was using slugs.

We called it quits at 11am and headed home as we both had stuff to do.

What a day!

Sam

[bersim]

Great work Sam and Murray! Looks like it was great day and you obviously taught him well! I was talking to your Mum last night and I asked her how big your tuna was and she replied "oh maybe about 50cm". Must be going off the old fisherman's ruler Except she added at the end that was only a piece of the fillet :silly:

James

[samsteele115]

haha yeah I thought I'd better give the old folks a fillet!

[tunafreak]

Nice work Sam and Murray......

[Luvit]

Congrats Murray on your first and Sam for his guiding abilities.

Glad to see you broke the drought, it was a long one

You have probably converted another fisho to the tuna fishing and how good is that? and he'll lend you his boat anytime!

Good way to start the season for the Hervey Bay warm up.

Looking at the conditions behind you the morning was the time to be there. By the time we came in form outside it was blowing and we headed for home. Report to come.

[samsteele115]

Yes Wayne it was like that the whole morning. Even when we were heading back around 11.30. Wind must have picked up after then, as forecast.

Great warmup for Hervey...

[Luvit]

Yeah, by the time Luke came good it was 1.30 and there were plenty of white caps. Saw one bust up and headed for home.

[Binder]

Well done!

[kmcrosby78]

Nice one fellas - three in one day is a great session!!!! Need to get me another one of those fish!!

[fifis101]

I am far from an expert on tuna and how hard they fight but 8kg seems like a lot of drag. I would have thought that kind of drag would have skull dragged a fish in of that size. You said you checked your drag but still didn't seem that confident in the number. I am by no means having a go, just curious. I would love other peoples opinions on this to see if I am way off the mark or not.

[samsteele115]

I am far from an expert on tuna and how hard they fight but 8kg seems like a lot of drag. I would have thought that kind of drag would have skull dragged a fish in of that size. You said you checked your drag but still didn't seem that confident in the number. I am by no means having a go, just curious. I would love other peoples opinions on this to see if I am way off the mark or not.

Haha no worries. Look I dont really know, it was just a guess (and probably an exaggerated and wrong one). To give you an idea, to be able to pull line off the spool without the line cutting my hand, I had to wrap it around my hand once to be able to pull it, so it was bloody tight! But probably not 8kg, you're right. Maybe 6 or something. I will have to test it properly instead of guessing and will get back to you when I do.

And keeping in mind this is towards the end of the fight where no line is being taken anyway.

I usually set a lighter drag (maybe 3 kg or a tiny bit more) for the hookup to avoid straightening the hook and then start to tighten it right up after that first run. The more pressure you put on them near the end the less circling under the boat they do, which can be painstaking.

Their power is hard to understand until you hook one though, so I think you would need some heavier gear than the average longtail gear to be able to skull drag them. They never give up.

[fifis101]

I am far from an expert on tuna and how hard they fight but 8kg seems like a lot of drag. I would have thought that kind of drag would have skull dragged a fish in of that size. You said you checked your drag but still didn't seem that confident in the number. I am by no means having a go, just curious. I would love other peoples opinions on this to see if I am way off the mark or not.

Haha no worries. Look I dont really know, it was just a guess (and probably an exaggerated and wrong one). To give you an idea, to be able to pull line off the spool without the line cutting my hand, I had to wrap it around my hand once to be able to pull it, so it was bloody tight! But probably not 8kg, you're right. Maybe 6 or something. I will have to test it properly instead of guessing and will get back to you when I do.

And keeping in mind this is towards the end of the fight where no line is being taken anyway.

I usually set a lighter drag (maybe 3 kg or a tiny bit more) for the hookup to avoid straightening the hook and then start to tighten it right up after that first run. The more pressure you put on them near the end the less circling under the boat they do, which can be painstaking.

Their power is hard to understand until you hook one though, so I think you would need some much heavier gear than the average longtail gear to be able to skull drag them. They never give up.

I think you will be surprised when you actually scale it. At a guess I think it will be a lot lower than you think. No saying you're wrong though. Drag though a rod length just feels a lot more than what it really is. Not different to trying to pick up a bucket of water at the end of a broom stick.

I recently caught a 1.2m bull up the Brissy river in my kayak. I did some dead lifts when I got home to work out what kind of drag I was putting on that shark and was guessed about 2kg max. In saying this doing dead lifts to measure a reel drag is not a very accurate method at all. Only reason I used this method is because I was lifting the bull up from deep water directly below me.

I also chase large sharks land based with big reels, so I know about heavy drags. I currently have my Makaira 80W set at 15kg and my Santiago 130 set at 20kg (this is at strike). I recently skull dragged a 8'9" lemon shark in on the Santiago without a click of drag and an 8'4" bull pull about 50m max of drag on the Makaira before it gave up. This just shows what really big fish can do, so that's kind of where I'm coming from.

[samsteele115]

Fair enough. I better do some testing then so I don't get my facts wrong again next time :whistle: .

The thing that confuses me is that the stradic 5000fj has 11kg of drag, and it felt like I was only a few turns away from fully locked drag. So thats where part of my estimation came from.

I guess the tighter it is each tiny little turn makes a bigger difference.

[max pwr]

I could see 8kg of drag getting stripped by a longie.......I've had my 8000 stradic on what I reckon was almost maximum drag and that got stripped. I could not pull it with the braid wrapped round my hand and it was screaming off when the fish was on.

I've caught metre bullies on my 2500 ci4 no worries, seen mad mullet catch them on 1000 size reels. Wouldn't put them in the same league as a toona.

[Brissy_yaker]

i've never chased tuna before but what strength line and leader do you use?

[samsteele115]

i've never chased tuna before but what strength line and leader do you use?

30lb braid and 40lb leader but the actual breaking strain is more than that in the brands I use.

8-16lb nordic stage favourite rod and 5000 stradic used for that particular fish.

[fifis101]

Hey don't get me wrong man, you could still be the one that's right here. I just know that people always over estimate their drag, especially when they are pulling on braid that is digging into their hand. It's always good to have an idea of a range of drag pressures, so you have an idea if you can really give that fish more or not.

[sehrguht]

I have gone pretty hard on longies with 8kg drag and some will come in easy in a couple minutes and others fight for 20mins and you are both wrecked, a lot of it is to do with the hookup.

With single hooks the hookup tends to be more solid in the mouth and you can turn their head pretty well.

Stickbaits with two sets of hooks can turn and catch the fish around the gill plate and cause you to have to drag against the width instead of puling the pointy end forward. We found this out a few weeks back after a couple grueling fights on stickbaits with trebles.

[Luvit]

Seems everyone has had different experiences.

I set my drag to 5kg with a set of spring scales and found it opened up the 5/0 TT jig head hook. It may have been where the hook up was, however since then I set it lighter.

Just do what works for you and experiment.

[tunafreak]

Knowing where Sam got his fish on the weekend I went out yesterday to get some for myself, I had a fair idea where they'd be (no where near where Sam got them ) .

First up I was keen to go get a feed of squid like I did on Sunday, on the way over I came across some longtails so I couldn't resist, got the boat in postion made a cast and I was on, that fish was on the deck in sub 5 mins and I thought that was a good sign for later in the day.

After that rude interruption I made my way over to the squid grounds, spent a couple of hours there for zilch so started to make my way out to the tuna grounds, stopping at each beacon along the way to see if I could raise a schoolie or two but they weren't playing the game either.

Got to the area where I thought the tuna would be and sure enough they were everywhere, but catching them was another story, they were very shy due to the glassy conditions so approaching them under petrol power was near impossible so I had to stalk them with the electric. Anyway after allot of hours persisting with the leccy I got another two fish for the afternoon.....tough going but got there in the end..

As for drag pressures, don't over think it, I personally just tighten the drag till I can't pull line off the spool and then make adjustments up or down during different stages of the fight.....

Cheers,

Al

[Luvit]

Mid week fishing the go and what a forecast for yesterday wind wise.

Sometimes I think, should I take the electric motor off the boat? But its a big advantage when the tuna are shy and you have just reconfirmed it. It's also good for the beacon bashing and holding position.

Nice report and just a lazy 3 tuna for the day Al, your slipping

[kmcrosby78]

Nice work Al. Without giving too much away, I'm assuming the key info you base your predictions on with regard to the location of tuna are mostly wind direction and tides? And I guess seasonal movements. I guess time on the water also plays a huge part of it.

[tunafreak]

Yeah Mate pretty much, knowing where Sam got onto his the other day as well as knowing the tide phase and wind direction he caught his on I had a hunch where to start looking and if they weren't there I would have looked more around the area he fished......the first fish of the day was just a chance encounter with a school as I was heading elsewhere.....in hindsight I probably should have hung around as there were more schools working the area but I was on a mission to get a few squid early and I thought the tuna would be hard on the chew through the middle of the day as they usually are...

Haha, yeah Wayne, losing my touch....the squid an schoolies are the worrying part, I rarely miss them but didn't get so much as a bump or follow from either species.....I got some grinners both jigging for squid and spinning for macks, can I have half a point for them?

[Luvit]

For every grinner it cancels out any points for the tuna