Portland Tuna -What I've Learnt

[CarlG]

This is awesome reading mate. Superb write up.

[rb85]

Great write up mate.

[Raulfc7]

I'll probably never fish for these species but I really enjoyed the read :a_goodjob: awesome

[Scraglor]

One of the best reads I have had in a while. Looking forward to the next installment!

[FishnMiss]

Thanks mate. It was a good read .

[yepi'mon]

Great write up mate. For someone planning to get into the fishery over the next few years it's interesting to read some sort of back story!

I just assumed that somewhere along the way I would watch an episode of old Rex Hunt tackling the big Tuna.... seems it won't be the case!

[raco09]

I'll probably never fish for these species but I really enjoyed the read :a_goodjob: awesome

Never say never my freind :water:

[ncr1]

Finding The Fish

This post is the first where I will be offering some advice on how to find and catch SBT. I will say from the outset that the following are only representative of my own opinions drawing from my own experiences out on the water. Many other people will have their own different approaches to chasing tuna that may end up being more effective than what I describe. But at least I can offer one opinion to get people started.

Finding schools of feeding tuna can be incredibly difficult in a big ocean, but sometimes it can also be incredibly easy. At the right time of year, there have been countless reports of boats heading out of Portland Harbour in the morning, quickly finding fish feeding close to shore, bagging out quickly and then being back at the ramp to clean their fish before 10am. But no one needs advice to find fish when they are like this. But when the tuna schools are much more spread out, or even when the schools are there but aren’t taking lures, a trip to Portland can very easily turn into a long day on the water without any action. Before hitting the water, many anglers will initially track down some reliable reports from the previous few days fishing from their mates or the local tackle shop and then head straight to the exact area where those tuna had been caught previously, often with the precise GPS coordinates in hand. And for good reason, a list of fresh and reliable reports from the same fishing grounds you will be targeting is a great resource to have up your sleeve.

However, I have always considered it best to use these local reports as only a rough guide of where one should focus their attention on any given trip. I might have been given a report telling me that there were dozens of fish caught at spot ‘X’ yesterday, yet I would still be very reluctant to head straight to that spot. The reason being is that every other boat has most likely been given the same report and that patch of ocean will most likely resemble a carpark by the time we arrive. When I reflect upon the most memorable and truly incredible tuna fishing sessions we’ve had along the way, the most consistent factor at these times was that we were the only boat in sight. Sure, we have a number of days where we have bagged out on tuna while jostling for position amongst all the other circling boats. But without a doubt, our very best sessions and our biggest fish have always been caught while we’ve had that particular piece of ocean to ourselves. Sometimes this has meant travelling to a location where no one else is heading, while other times it has meant getting there earlier than everyone else, or even hanging around longer in the day until the other boats have headed home.

Of course, this low traffic approach doesn’t just mean selecting any random piece of open-ocean where you think the boat traffic will be at a minimum - you still need to locate schools of fish that are actively feeding. Admittedly, on weekends and public holidays where boat traffic is generally at its peak, it may be almost impossible to find fish without other boats being nearby. This is will continue to be an issue given the ever-increasing popularity of tuna fishing along the south-west. But I still believe it to be very worthwhile to target the less busy areas, provided that you still find yourself in a fishy area. And that’s where the real challenge comes in – going against the grain and finding fishy water on your own (or perhaps with only a couple of others nearby). This approach takes a bit of self-confidence and commitment and you’re probably going to have a couple of trips where you catch little or nothing, while the crowds of other boats were spending the day bagging out closer inshore. But as long as your pride isn’t damaged too much, you do your research properly, and you stick to the plan rather than being seduced by radio reports of hookups elsewhere, I believe that the low-traffic, DIY approach will certainly catch you more fish over the longer term.

The first decision to make is to choose your launch location. Personally, I would always instantly bypass Portland on busy weekends such as Easter and Anzac Day, because the boat traffic would be enormous, particularly if the weather forecast is even half decent. Ideally it would be great to have the flexibility to fish during the working week instead of the weekends, but I know that this scenario is more of a luxury and not always possible. But if a weekend is all you have and every man and his dog is at Portland, why not consider launching from Port Fairy or Warrnambool instead? There will still be a decent amount of boats launching from these locations, but these couple of ramps will always attract smaller crowds than Portland and the boat traffic will continue thin out the more offshore you travel. The other thing about these more easterly locations is that the edge of the shelf is a bloody long way – which I actually think can be an advantage since many/most boats won’t be willing to put in the extra kilometres on the water. Needless to say, the weather needs to be suitable, but starting your trip from Port Fairy or Warrnambool gives you a bit more scope in regards to locating ‘unworked’ pieces of ocean. And if schools of tuna are being caught at Portland, most of the time they will be found further east as well. It will just be a matter of finding them yourself rather than other boats finding them for you.

Which brings me to the second decision you need to make - which part of the ocean are you going to focus your efforts on? This is the point when I usually take the most notice of the local fishing reports. Sometimes you will get reports of tuna being taken from almost everywhere - off the shelf, from the 100-200m mark, as well as in close to shore. Having reports of fish that are widespread is great, but it doesn’t offer you a clear focal point on where to best concentrate your efforts. There are too many options and this can lead to analysis paralysis. Under these circumstances, my inclination would be to initially begin the long motor out towards the shelf edge and in the meantime, while we are cruising along the many kilometers of ocean out to the shelf (not trolling), all of us onboard would be keeping a sharp eye out for signs of fishy water (i.e. working birds, bait on the sounder and hopefully jumping tuna). If along the way we were to come across some convincingly fishy water and there are not many other boats present, we would throw the lures in and start trolling for half an hour or so. If there were no sign of tuna after that time, we would pull the rigs in and continue on towards the shelf again. If we reach the edge of the shelf without seeing anything notable, we would then focus our efforts along specific geographical features of the shelf edge (see below). The idea behind this approach is that we would be covering and observing a large distance of ocean that is representative of a cross-section of different oceanic environments (i.e. inshore areas, the mid-shelf plateau, as well as the outer edge of the shelf). That way, without knowing what ocean environment/cross-section/gradient the tuna will be holding, we’ve at least covered our bases as best as we can. In an ideal world, we would troll lures all the way to the shelf, but then it would take all day just to get there. And hopefully, we’ll find the fish well before we actually reach the shelf and be spared from having to travel those kinds of distances on the water.

The only reason I would NOT consider the shelf as an initial target location would be if the local reports were clearly indicating that no (or very few) fish were being caught from these offshore areas. Afterall, it’s a long way to go and try to ‘defy-the-odds’ when no one else has been able to catch anything in that area. However, I rate the waters around the shelf edge to be some of the most productive fishing grounds available, and it is not often where the shelf edge has little action to offer. But sometimes the reports coming from inshore areas are just too good to ignore and you have to head towards spot ‘X’ and join in the festivities with the other boats. A scenario like this happened back in 2010 when there were some very consistent reports of barrels being caught in only 50 meters of water off Port Fairy. I had just moved to Melbourne at that time, but I made the trek one weekend to try my chances on these fish with the old crew. We fished the Sunday and when we arrived, there were boats everywhere across a small 5km patch of ocean. There were even a few who were clearly hooked up on big fish. However, we trolled for most the day without a look and registered our first and only tuna fishing donut. After I had travelled back to Melbourne later that day with my tail between my legs, my other two mates decided to have another crack in the same area on the following Tuesday. Needless to say that I got a phone call later that afternoon to say that they had just landed two 100kg+ barrels from a double hookup! These fish wouldn’t have been caught without responding to local reports.

But what about a situation where there are no local reports coming in from anywhere and you have to try and predict where the tuna might be holding at any one time? You can always flip a coin and ‘blindly’ troll around the open ocean hoping to strike it lucky. But I think you can still be a bit more targeted than that.

Like any form of gamefishing, finding the gamefish is all about finding the bait. And it’s no different with SBT along the south-west. One of the most popular ways of finding bait-holding areas, particularly by fisherman along the eastern coast of Australia, is by using up-to-the-date sea surface temperature (SST) charts. Generally, concentrations of bait can be found in locations where warm and cold oceanic currents butt up against each other and generate distinct water temperature gradients. Bait is often found concentrated right next to these gradients.

A number of anglers fishing out of Portland use SST technology to help them track down the tuna, but I personally believe that these charts have a lot less utility along the south-western coast in comparison to the east coast. Along the coasts of Queensland and New South Wales, the common situation is that warm tropical oceanic currents from the north flow in a southerly direction (i.e. the EAC) and eventually intersect with cold water coming up from the south, often leading to distinct temperature gradients. Yet, along the south-west coast of Victoria, the oceanic currents are usually travelling from west to east, rather than north to south, meaning that the temperature differentials are nowhere near as extreme as they can be along the eastern coast.

However, oceanic currents, particularly the Bonney upwelling, still concentrate bait in various areas along the south-west coast. The Bonney upwelling is where cold, deep and nutrient-rich currents moving eastwards from the Great Australian Bight towards Tasmania, hit the steep edge of the shelf off Portland and get ‘sling-shotted’ towards the surface. This is where the nutrients from the cold deep waters are allowed to mix with the sunny and warm surface water, which then generates the ideal conditions for the whole food-chain to kick off. The Bonney upwelling phenomenon is the reason why the waters off Portland are renowned as a unique feeding ground for blue whales. It’s also why Portland is at the epicentre of the south-west SBT fishery.

Oceanic currents are generally quite chaotic and difficult to predict. But the good news for recreational anglers is that there are locations along the coast where the upwelling is more concentrated and localized, meaning more bait and more predators. Many fishos heading out of Portland may have heard of locations like the Horseshoe and the Kink. These locations are geographical features of the shelf edge that are particularly steep or carved in a way that gives them a greater ability to ‘funnel’ the nutrient rich waters to the surface that subsequently leads to areas of concentrated upwelling, and often concentrated SBT. And there are many more locations along the shelf edge than just the Horseshoe and the Kink that provide similar areas of upwelling.

One of the most important fish-finding tools we had in our arsenal was a detailed depth contour map that showed the underwater geography all along the coast from Port MacDonnell to Warrnambool. From these charts it was pretty easy to identify the small sections of the shelf edge that would be more capable of concentrating the upwelling (i.e. contour bars close together). And most importantly, we always found these areas of the shelf to be far, far more productive fishing than the flatter, more featureless areas nearby. I remember a number of times where we’d be trolling along kilometers and kilometers of relatively featureless shelf edge for no action and no bait on the sounder. But when we arrived at one of our contour map features, bait would almost immediately start showing up on the sounder, and it generally didn’t take long for our lures to be hit soon after. Those maps caught us a hell of a lot of fish over the years, particularly when the chips were down.

[Lightningx]

Great read again with some awesome advice there!
Cheers :thumbsup:

[Mattblack]

Thanks ncr....looking forward to the next chapter!