Bluefin Tuna on Fly — Tim Johnson

Southern Bluefin Tuna on Fly

Ten Years in the Making!

Tim ‘Tunny’ Johnson

As you progress in fishing inevitably we start looking for more challenges.

Most of us start off soaking a bait, then progress on to hard body and soft plastic lures or move on to the fly rod where hunting the fish is more of the thing as opposed to the sit and wait mentality. For me one of the biggest challenges is chasing big saltwater fish on a fly rod. If you really want to take the challenge from the sublime to the ridiculous, try catching big saltwater fish on a fly rod under the International Game fishing Association (IGFA) rules.

Fly Rod and IGFA - A tough gig

Everything is in the fishes favour when fishing IGFA rules, from using a rod that resembles a big noodle, a reel that is only 1:1 retrieve, having a leader that’s only 30cm long to stop the fish biting or wearing you off, and a maximum tippet breaking strain of 10kg. Everything gives the fish the advantage, and that’s even before you find a fish! The boat must be out of gear when the fly is presented (so no trolling of the fly) and a harness cannot be attached to the rod while fighting the fish. When you finally get it alongside the boat after surviving the battle, you must use a fixed head gaff to try and land it. With all these restriction as you can imagine success is a rare commodity, but that’s what makes it so worthwhile “If it was easy everyone would do it.” I’ve had a goal to land a southern bluefin tuna on IGFA fly tackle for about 10 years. Whenever we go out the fly rod is rigged, locked and loaded at the front of the boat much to my brother (the captains) disgust, as he’s not a fan of the wand. In my defence, I have had some success with hooking and landing tuna on the fly rod, but none of them were IGFA legal. I’ve come

close but if things could go wrong they did. Everything from the boat still in gear when the fly was presented, leaders being 5mm too long after being stretched by the fish, to IGFA class line breaking above its classification when tested. These setbacks are frustrating yes, but they just add fuel to the fire in my opinion.

A Plan Was Set

With all of the above to give you context, I got the phone call that as a fisherman you don’t want at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon when you’re mowing the lawn “where are ya, the bluefin are going crazy today, we’ve tagged and released nearly 20 and are sick of winding them in and the weather is going to be rubbish tomorrow- 20-30knts! We might get an 1hr window in the morning but I doubt it”. So decision time, do I drive the 2 ½ hrs down to the coast tonight with the high probability that all I’m doing is wasting fuel? I say decision time but as all keen fisherman know, it is really not a decision. Where there’s life there’s hope! So off to the east coast to get rigged and to wait and see what the weather would bring.

Now always being safety conscious and not ever wanting to go to sea in a deteriorating forecast when Sunday rolled around it turned out that the forecast front was due after lunch which gave us a four hour window of 10 knot winds to safely go to sea. So a plan was hatched. We would troll lures on conventual tuna tackle until we located the school of fish. On hook up the boat would be taken out of gear, my niece India Thompson would fight the hooked fish, captain would clear the roads and I would cast the “chicken sized fly” on the back on a superfast sinking fly line and hopefully get it deep enough to tempt one of the southern bluefin tuna before they moved on. After about an hour of trolling 2 game rods folded over at once and the plan was put into action. Boat out of gear, rods cleared, fly in and nothing. Ok, let’s try that again. We trolled about 200m, again one of the rods folded over, the boat was put out of gear, the other rods cleared, cast the fly in, nothing. This happened three more times in about 30 mins. As I was getting to the point where the crew had to hide the sharp knives to stop me ending my frustration, we finally noticed that only the lumo green lures where getting hit, not the black or the blue. So into the fly box and off with the black and purple fly and on with the brightest green thing I could find.

A Goal Achieved

Ok lets try this dance again. Like clock work we started to troll again, the rods folded over, the boat out of gear, lines cleared, fly in and nothing. Now I think I was just about ready to throw this silly fly rod at the fish when on the second strip the fly got absolutely hammered. The rod buckled over and the fly line whipped off the deck as I did my best to stop it tangling on all the obstacles that you have on the back deck of a boat. When the fly line reached the reel the speed at which the fish accelerated made the spool spin so fast I instantly got a blister on my finger where it had been touching the spool. Now as much as a fly rod looks like a noodle its amazing how much pressure you can put on it especially by using low rod angles and that was the case with this fish, after 2 runs of about 100m the fish settled under the boat and was pumped up and landed in less than eight minutes. The feeling of elation was contagious and the crew erupted when we finally got the fish on board. While not a massive tuna, the size didn’t really matter as the feeling of finally reaching this goal had me smiling for the next week.

Expect to be one the rod for quite a while when a tuna is attached.

Gear For Tackling Bluefin On Fly

If you think you want to take up this challenge, here’s some tips that might help. These have been gained from years of failure, so they are well and truly tried and proven. Number one, use bigger flies than you think. A four kilogram tuna will hit a 30cm long lure so your flies can never be too big. Number two, use a fast sinking line. The majority of the school of tuna will be sitting seven to 15 metres below the surface and you need to get down to them. Number 3, you need a reel with a large arbour for retrieval speed, a smooth drag and about 600m of backing. Out in the deep blue the fish that grabs your fly might be a schoolie but it could also be a 60 – 100kg giant, you just never know.

Saltwater fly fishing for big pelagic fish on IGFA tackle is about as rewarding as fishing gets. Give it a go, hopefully it doesn’t take you 10 years to reach your goal! Tim Johnson

When you are using flies this size big fish are expected. (Shown actual size)