Tuna!

I went tuna fishing today!

I had never been fishing for tuna before, and it’s also the farthest offshore I’ve ever gone to fish (about 25mi).

I woke up at 3:15, pulled out of the driveway at 3:50, and pulled up to the dock at La Push at 5:00.
There were 3 other anglers aboard the Top Notch, skippered by Jim Richeson.
We motored for about 90min before reaching our first fishing spot.

We set up for fast trolling (7kt or so), with first 3 and then 4 “tuna poles” with level wind reels and a mixture of cedar plugs and squid plugs. I was particularly impressed with how well the cedar plugs worked, given that they look like a chunk of wood and lead with a hook coming out one end.

We also set out 2 hand lines, essentially lengths of rope with plugs tied to the end.

The way it works is, you put out the 6 pieces of gear (4 rods and 2 hand lines), then troll along until something hits. Once you get a hit, one angler starts fighting the fish, while the others bring in all the rest of the gear. At that point, the skipper starts putting out light “salmon” rods with spinning reels (my favorite type) and “swim bait”, which is a lure that looks a lot like a little herring, with a lead head with eyes painted on, and a replaceable body made of silicone (or similar) that flips around like the fish is swimming. The bodies are too fragile to hold up to trolling, but casting and retrieving kills time while the tuna is being landed, and since tuna swim in schools, sometimes you can get a hit on the light weight gear, which leads to a different sort of fight than the stiffer tuna rig.

All this is to say that tuna fishing is a bit of a team sport, and to explain the various ways in which we bring in tuna.

I don’t remember every single stop and every single fight, so I will detail what I remember.

On the first troll, we put 3 fish in the box. I got the second fish on the boat. Then we had a bit of a lull, before we caught the next one. However, it was cool to have some fish in the box before 8am.

By 10:30 or so, we had run across several more good spots, and it was warm enough that I had taken off my raincoat and my sweatshirt and was fishing in a t-shirt.

Usually, the poles would hit, as they were out about 100′ or so behind the boat. But on several occasions, a tuna would hit on one of the hand lines also, and it was a totally different way of bringing in a catch. Pulling a fish in on a hand line feels very primal, mano a mano, etc.

Tuna are very hard-fighting fish. I would often get one close to the boat (close enough to see it in the nearly-black 3000′ deep water), only to have it make a long run, and I’d have to fight it all over again. The task is to get the fish close enough to the boat that the skipper can reach out and grab the leader with one hand, so he can gaff the fish with the other.

I brought in 7 fish, 1 on the hand line, 3 on the tuna rods, and 3 on the light rods.

The hand line fish was by far the easiest. In fact, the hand line fish I caught was one of two that I brought aboard on that particular stop. I brought in the hand line, then swapped to one of the tuna rods, and landed a second fish. That was very cool.

There were two “awesome” stops, one where all 6 pieces of gear hit at the same time! We landed 5 of those, then picked up another one on a swim bait at the same stop, for a total of 6 fish on that stop. I lost the only fish of that stop, when someone needed to trade places with me, and as they did it, caused my line to go slack for a moment. Barbless hooks stink. But it was still pretty cool to get 6 fish on board at one time.

Another “awesome” stop was for (what we thought was) a “double”, where two (of the 4) tuna rods fired at the same time. It turned out that both hand lines had fish that time as well, and 2 people landed fish on swim bait. So for what we thought was a “double” hit, we got 6 more fish, too. This was the stop where I pulled in two.

My best fight of the day came a little later. I think it was a single (might have been a double), and after bringing in gear, I took one of the two swim bait rods on my side of the boat. One of the other anglers picked up the other. Both swim bait rods had tuna on them! So Ace (the other angler) and I stood there, fighting these 2 fish on this really lightweight gear, for a *very* long time. I know that I brought my fish to the boat 5 times, only to have it make long runs and force me to fight it some more. Having lost a fish to a broken fishing line earlier in the day, I was being conservative with how hard I was pulling vs. how much I was letting the fish run out the line. Then “More Than a Feeling” came on the radio, and I redoubled my effort. Ace and I had to swap places (did it that time without giving any slack), and we landed the fish one-two (his was first), before the song ended. There is no possible way I could have made up such a perfect moment.

Out on the Pacific Ocean, deep blue (almost black) water, bright sunny day, t-shirt weather, calm seas, having the fight of my life on this little tiny rod (the rod was bent essentially double as I got the fish close to the boat), with one of my favorite songs of all time playing… it was magical.

The way that you are supposed to hunt tuna is just like they showed on Blue Planet; you look for a flock of birds, diving into a bait ball. Then you park over the top of it and catch the tuna coming up from below. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was some gorgeous footage, and I would love to say that’s how it went.

But it’s not.

We fished “blind” all day long, following reports from other vessels, and chasing the big trawlers (that’s when we got the 6-banger). But mostly, it was just a workmanlike effort, catching one or two fish here, then motoring to a different spot, catching another few, etc. Skipper really knows what he’s doing.

What with one thing and another, we finished the day with 30 tuna; 7 per angler and 2 for the skipper. Each tuna is about 20-25 lb, so I guess that I had about 150lb worth of fish (pre-butchering). I weighed my catch when I got home, and it came to 68lb. That was destined to be a whole bunch of pints and some left over for tuna steaks.

But that’s another post.

The day of tuna fishing was exhausting, exhilarating, and an all-around good time. The skipper really knows how to find fish, and I couldn’t have asked for a prettier day on the water.

Seven tuna. That should feed the family for awhile.