With all this talk of southern bluefin on F..net and facebook the idea of heading down to Waihau Bay to chase them went from talk over a couple of beers to a 6 hour car ride and for the boys towing the boat an 8 hour slug!
The plan started on a Wednesday avo while some of the boys were in the shop having some beers after work and the idea of bluefin was bought up with a nice weather window appearing for the weekend.
The plan was leave friday avo, fish saturday and drive home sunday and hopefully get a chance at a bluefin trolling lures.
While rigging lures and getting jigging gear ready i also threw in a stickbaiting rod and a couple casting lures with the intention of if we saw them busting it would be the ultimate way to catch one but never thought i would actually get the opportunity.
So after the 6 hour drive down we arrived late that night and set the alarm for 4:30am to make sure we would be on the water well before daylight and hopefully arrive at the grounds on daybreak!
only one problem and as we back the boat in we have a few tech difficulties as the engine wasnt wanting to start but we soon sorted the problem and now heading wide after a 20min delay.
while steaming out in the dark the sky started to show some light and only half way to where we were heading we came into a pod of dolphins
The call was to stop and set the gear.
While startig to get the boat ready my mate cory calls
...bluefin....
which i responded bull sh*t
he then swore on his life and so we both started trying to put our top water gear together as fast as we could.
after tying my lure on i looked around to see for any splashes but all i could see was dolphins so made a cast towards them and started sweeping while cory was still rigging
mid way through my retrieve I announced "imagine how cool the bite must be from one of these" and just after those words left my mouth a tuna left the water with my stickbait in its mouth completely air born
BLUEFINNNNNN!!!!!
and my reel just started screaming as it power dove straight down on a 200m+ run
I just had to keep dialing the drag trying to slow the fish, as soon i had 250m out and only 50m of line left.
but as fast as it run down it turned around and charged straight back 150m while i was trying to keep up.
After the initial run it began to plug down deep and settled in for the fight
Which on a 8 foot 3 inch casting rod was extremely painful
but after around 30 minutes we could just start to see colour and it did one last run down another 50m but the fish was tired and it pin wheeled back up and soon we had it in the boat much to my relief
Side note: because i didnt think id ever get to cast at one of these fish i just picked up some lures i kingy fish with which all have barbless trebles and once in the boat the lure just fell out
This was truly a dream fish for me and something i never dreamed of doing or having the opportunity but I hope I get to try it again as the bite was something i will never be able to remove from my mind.........
but maybe once my back recovers
So far i havnt heard of anyone else that has caught a SBT on a stickbait in NZ but i maybe wrong that this might be a first???