Midwinter Mahi (And Yellowfin Tuna)
So good to be out on the beautiful Black Rat again! But to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Reason being so few reports were coming in last week. But how wrong I was! First stop, the ‘Birchgrove Park’ wreck, for a quick jig. Nothing there. We passed over Browns Mountain – but not the main hump. Still marking some quality fish in deeper water though:
On we went to just east of the Mountain, set out a spread, and started trolling:
Conditions were great, water clarity was amazing, and water temperature 18.3 – up from 15.5, at Barrenjoey. Things were looking good. First strike didn’t take long – a 65cm, 6 kilo+ striped tuna:
The next one came as quite a shock, considering we are in the middle of a particularly cold winter. This 84cm mahi weaved its way through the spread to hit one of our purple Zuker clone lures. There’s a good reason why the original is supposedly the best selling lure in the world:
Not surprised. Everything offshore loves them:
Check them out here? At $50 for four including delivery you can’t go wrong:
An hour or so passed without any action. So I retired to the forward stateroom to meditate on our strategy:
The sound of a howling Tiagra drag had me bolting for the deck. Don Nicol was onto something in a whole new size category:
After a solid fight and some nervous moments boatside, we boated our first yellowfin of the season:
We got him iced down and headed north on the troll, having overheard some radio chatter about tuna wide of the Bait Station. We didn’t find any tuna – but we did find what has got to be every game fisherman’s dream. A big log floating in deep water. Could it be holding any mahi, at this time of year? You betcha:
There were also thousands of juvenile kings and amberjacks in attendance. Here’s Angus with his PB (only kidding!)
Suddenly one of the most amazing phenomenons I’ve seen in fifty years of fishing happened. A pod of whales passed by, heading south. The mahi disappeard at the same time. Then, as one, they turned around and raced back to the log, leaping out of the water to get there faster. Check this out:
The mahi were super touchy but I managed to crack the code with a new submersible stickbait I’ve been testing:
This is the second time it’s been the only lure they’d go for, same thing happened on the Texas Reef trap buoys back in April. Will put up a web page and offer it to our readers – at a killer price, of course:
That brought us to the end of the day. And what a memorable day it was. Big thanks to James and the rest of the crew and thanks for your support too
Andrew Hestelow
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