Bass Strait Jumbo Tuna

Jarvis Wall

Sometimes fishing can give you some amazing memories that will last a lifetime and this is the story of one that will last with me forever. This isn’t going to be your normal article but more of an informative recap of one of the greatest experiences of my fishing life.

On the 12th of October 2021, my great mate James Smith and I had planned to head out of our home port of Devonport to go and drag some lures for one of the famed big Bluefin Tuna that this new fishery had become renowned for in the last year and a half. It was a normal working day so we wouldn’t have a heap of time to go out after work but we wanted to make the most of the opportunities we got. At around 3pm, James messaged me slightly concerned about the weather, as it was fairly windy and to be completely honest I knew it wasn’t going to be comfortable either. After a quick observation along Lillico straight on my way home from work I rang James up and pretty much tricked him into going by saying that it wasn’t really that choppy (which it definitely was). We met up with each other and set off from Ambleside with the big Navigator in tow and headed for the Devonport boat ramp. We had a nice easy launch and sat in ready for the bumpy ride out, which was certainly bumpy!

After making it out about 5 kilometres to the 35m line off the river mouth we thought bugger it we’ll put the lures in as we was could basically only go trolling speed anyway. A spread of 6-10 inch skirts went out, Blue lumo Meridian Saltshaker 4 in the short corner, Meridian Green lumo Ahi 4 in the long corner, Blue lumo Meridian Demon 4 on short rigger, JB lures micro dingo in a custom redbait colour on long rigger and on shotgun a Blue lumo Meridian demon 5. With the wind so foul and just the two of us on board, we opted to run just 5 skirts to make everything as easy as possible for us in preparation for chaos.

On we pushed towards the 45m line where I had a plan to put in place. I remember saying to James on the way out that if we marked some bait we’d just hang with that rather than just blind drive around til dark hoping for a random strike and after about 15 minutes of trolling I found a massive amount of bait mid-water on the sounder and said to James I think we are staying here. There wasn’t a heap of bird life, just the odd mutton bird and gannet flying around but I was happy to be around bait and confident in my approach.

When a plan comes together

We battled on as it was starting to get on towards dark now. At around 8pm, I said to James “one more lap over this and we’ll start heading back”, sure enough as I came back over the bait that last time there was a very convincing arch on the sounder around 25m down which I said to James “that has to be a Tuna, we have to do another pass!” I swung back around and headed back towards the mark and just as I was starting to turn we hear a massive crack and as we swung around from our seats in the cabin, the short rigger absolutely exploded and the Talica 50 just begun haemorrhaging line out, there was no mistaking this fish, it was definitely a jumbo Tuna.

I slowed the boat back to an idle and hit the autopilot function to keep us pointed straight while James jumped on the rod and I started to clear the deck. After a few minutes we knew this fish was a proper animal, it did not stop taking line and it was taking it fast. With half a spool of PE8 braided line out on the Talica we estimate this fish dumped around 550-650 metres of line. We slowly started to win some line back and as the light faded James settled in on the deck for the long haul while I battled the waves and trying to keep the big Navigator away from cutting the line. The fight was a fair stalemate for the last hour or so with the fish just finding it’s happy depth.

We tried planing the fish up with the boat but it was just far too stubborn. With the wind getting worse by the minute we tried to do circles over the fish but with the swell and wind how it was, this was extremely risky as we didn’t want to drive over the top of the fish and lose it, especially after the fight so far. This eventually starting to break this fish’s spirits and we started to gain line when all of a sudden there was a massive shift and it seems like the fish almost gave up the ghost and it just come to the surface. We were extremely wary as we both know all too well how hard these things are to handle boat side and with just us two in the average conditions we were extremely nervous. The fish then popped up on the surface and much to both our surprise the issues fishing from your peak body, visit our new website. had become tail wrapped during the fight. This had caused the fish to be dragged backwards which in turn caused the fish to drown.

It was a bit bitter sweet as we’d planned to release the fish but with the conditions it was always going to be difficult, so harvesting the fish because of events out of our control didn’t seem so bad. The big plus was we both love eating Bluefin and we knew none would be wasted.

After securing the gaffs in the fish we could see it was a serious beast and getting the thing over the side of the boat with just us two on board was going to be a nightmare. Looking back at the GoPro footage, what felt like a minute was actually nearly 15 minutes trying to get this thing on board. Just muscling it over the side was never going to happen, so we had to get out on the rear pod which in those horrible conditions was quite dumb now looking back on it! In the end we were both safe and under the 10pm darkness we finally managed to get this massive lump of a tuna on the deck.

As you can imagine we both lost it in excitement, we were absolutely spent but we were so stoked to have gone out and succeeded with it being just us two on board. After an examination of the fish we came to realise the clip to the lure had actually come undone during the fight and the lure trace could’ve come off at any moment, luck was definitely on our side! At the time it was hard to make a guess on this giants weight but we knew it was extremely big! We putted back to port very steadily and sat back just trying to comprehend what had just happened, it almost felt like some sort of a dream!

At this point it was around 10:30pm and we had to try and find some scales to weigh the tuna, luckily enough the legend and founder of this fishery Glen Saltmarsh was awake and he was extremely keen to help out and get his scales down to us. We hung the fish up and got it weighed and the final result saw the fish pulling the scales down to 130 kilograms which was so unbelievable as we’d cracked our first Jumbo over 100 kilograms and done it out of our home port!

The next day we processed the fish and had people coming left right and centre to grab a share of this beautiful meat, it’s great to see something like this utilised and not have it go to waste, it certainly makes the bitter sweet feeling less bitter.

The gear we use

Running over the gear we used to stop this fish begins with the rod, we like to run all 37 kilogram rods, reel and line so a 37kg Shimano Tiagra Ultra 37kg rod was the stick of choice, as for the reel we couple the rod up with a Shimano Talica 50 2 speed which we have spooled with 1000 metres of Tasline Elite White PE8 braided line with about 100 metres of 37kg monofilament top shot. This is then joined to a 200lb wind on leader which follows down to our clip which in this instance was clipped onto a pre rigged skirt being a Meridian Tackle Blue Lumo Demon 4 on 150lb Fluorocarbon.

Thank you for reading and I hope this inspires you to get out and have a crack at finding yourself one of these amazing animals. We are truly lucky to have them right on our doorstep here and I hope that you can head out and use some of the information that I’ve shared and find one for yourself!

Jarvis Wall