Rare Tuna Catch In New Zealand: Bigeye ff

Source: Nelson Mail



Keen Nelson fisherman Craig Bartlett knew something different was going on when he hooked a fish close to the Boulder Bank last week – “the rod went like nothing else has taken it before”.

A fierce fight and about 10 minutes later, he hauled aboard a large tuna that might be the first of its kind to be caught on the Nelson coastline.

Neither Mr. Bartlett nor his two fishing mates Kurt Anderson and Matt Elliott knew what they’d got, despite being successful at trolling for the large kingfish that arrive in Tasman Bay each summer.

The torpedo-like fish with a powerful body and yellow markings just ahead of its tail weighed at least 20kg, and took the kind of Rapala lure that kingfish are said to favor.

In fact they caught it after seeing surface activity in about 15m of water and thinking they had located a school of kingfish – they’d caught a large one of those a couple of hours before.

But the owner of the Nelson Hunting and Fishing store, Chris Scully, told them they had a bigeye or possibly an even more rare species, a slender tuna.

Bluefin tuna are caught on the South Island’s West Coast and albacore tuna are taken by boats fishing out of Nelson, but Mr. Scully, who formerly fished for tuna from Whakatane, said he’d never heard of a bigeye being taken south of Taranaki. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

He initially thought the fish might be a juvenile yellowfin, another tuna species not known to be caught in Tasman Bay, but after checking with many sources including commercial skippers, he thought it was most likely to be a bigeye. Either way, as far as he could establish, the catch was “unique”.

Mr. Scully said Tasman Bay had been producing a lot of snapper and kingfish this summer and there were more kahawai about than he’d ever seen.

A few days ago “the bay was just bubbling with kahawai”, he said.

“There’s an incredible amount of baitfish out there with the warm temperatures, and that has brought these predator fish in.”

The three fishermen, who go out in a Nelson-made Osprey boat, had set off at daybreak, their third trip in three days, and caught the tuna at midday when they were getting ready to come in.

Their plan was to show the catch to a few more friends before “steaking it up”.

“It’ll be good tucker,” Mr. Bartlett said, adding that the remaining partner in the boat, Jesse Crasborn, would be “gutted” to have missed being there for the unusual catch. A commercial fisherman, he’s at sea.