Tuna Chase - Sunshine Coast, April 2010

First trip report, and some would say about time. That is, if anyone was looking at this yet.....

I actually had a pretty ordinary summer of fishing on Sydney Harbour - the fish were patchy, and I seemed to regularly pull the wrong rein in terms of picking my days. Then in February I was burgled, and lost a good chunk of my fishing gear (%#$#&$#). Everything was replaced by mid-April, but by that point I was really keen to get my string pulled and the local fishing had petered out.

Bugger.

So I was mooching around on the forums, and one of the Sunny Coast boys posted some info about the annual tuna chase. Apparently the fishing had been hot, the weather forecast was good, and there were a few deckie slots to be had. Three phone calls later I was in business, and two days later I was on the plane.

Now I knew bugger all about chasing tuna on the Sunshine Coast. Closest I'd fished was Hervey Bay, so I was hoping to borrow heavily on what I'd learnt there and hoped my partner could help make up the rest.

Turned out my partner, Graham Stuart, was a Sunshine Coast rookie as well. So much for the local knowledge. What he was though was an absolutely cracking fellow and a dead keen fisho, and he also had an awesome boat - a Seafarer Vantage 485 (aka a Haines Traveller).



Saturday morning, and it was hacking down rain. I forecast the clouds to burn off by 7 - it was still raining by 4pm. Thankfully though, there was no wind and the swell was clean, so the conditions were actually pretty good. We made the call to run North out of Mooloolabah (which has a pretty well protected harbour entry and great ramps), and we were on to fish pretty much straight away. 7am and I had a Mac Tuna in the boat, by 730 Graham had one as well. Smallish Macs (55-60cm models), but enough to spin the drag (and christen the new Loomis GLX Cross Current and Tibor Riptide) and put smiles on our faces. We felt like geniuses.
By about noon, the genius feeling was ebbing away a little. We'd added a third fish of similar size, but the schools had gone from patchy to single fish to not even seeing a bust for the last 90 minutes. We made the call the run back toward Mooloolabah and stick in tighter to the shore, as apparently a lot of the action over the last week had been in close.

It was a good call. We found bigger tuna in tight to Alexandra Headland. They were still patchy and boat shy, but if you were persistant and patient, the shots came. Graham was the first to hook up.


The first run was a ripper. 50+ metres of backing out the guides was the start of a 15 minute battle. We'd called it as a Longtail, but it turned out to instead be a bloody big Mac Tuna. It was a cracking fish, and a PB Mac for Graham. Smiles were plentiful.


I got my big Mac about 20 minutes later. Again it was that same blistering run to open proceedings followed by a 15 minute slugfest.



On the ride back to the ramp, once again, we felt like geniuses.

There was a meet and greet for all the tuna chase participants down the Kawana hotel on Saturday night. We'd done OK, but the boys who turned south had done better. That's where Graham and I decided to go on Sunday.

Sunday morning, sunny, clear and windless. What swell there was had dropped out. It was glamour conditions.

We headed out and found the tuna off Caloundra. Again Macs, again boat shy and patchy. Same rules as Saturday arvo applied - you mooched around where the fish were busting most consistantly, and eventually you got shots. It wasn't easy fishing by any means, but when you hooked up it was rewarding.

Joe de Jager, one of the local boys (and organisers of the comp) had told us what it was like to hook a monster Mac Tuna - the 8 kilo suckers that ran for miles and gave you an absolute streetfight. My last fish on the Sunday was one of these guys, and it gave me one of the best runs and fights a fish has ever given me.



It's funny, Mac Tuna get a bad wrap in SE Qld. Maybe it's because they don't take flies as readily as Longtails, or you can't eat them, but I tell you what, if Mac Tuna turned up in Sydney on a regular basis, we wouldn't even bother chasing Salmon or Kings.

At the Chase wrap up back at Tie'N'Fly (the local fly fishing shop), it turned out we'd well and truely kept up with the Joneses on the Sunday, but were weren't able to rake back the ground we'd lost on the Saturday. Nonetheless we were two pretty happy fishos on Sunday.

I'm certainly keen to go back for the 2011 Tuna Chase. It's a great weekend - not too serious but well run, and plenty of social aspects to the weekend as well.

A big thanks to Joe de Jager, the team at Tie'N'Fly, and Graham Stuart (and Matt the Pom, who stocked me up with flies at short notice). See you all next year.

Tackle: Loomis GLX Cross Current 9 weight, Tibor Riptide & SA Striped Bass Intermediate, 1/0 surf candies