Big Bluefin Tuna Day in Tassie
With our first on air date less than a month away (April 4) we are busy at the moment spending as much time on the water making shows as we can. This includes trips to all over Australia, but also fishing/filming in our local waters around Tasmania. It was late on a Friday night that we got the call from a charter fishing mate that the big Bluefin Tuna had turned up off Tassie’s South East Coast, the following Monday morning we were up at 3.30am with boat and Triton ready to roll.
This is less a 4WDing trip as it is a very long, testing tow. We’ve towed the boat, a 6.5 meter Whittley which weighs over two tons all the way from Tasmania to the Whitsunday’s and back late last year, so the three and half hour tow to Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsular isn’t practically daunting – particularly given the first 150kms in on Tassie’s Highway #1. But then you turn off, and it gets interesting.
The road through the Cole Valley is hilly, narrow, windy and very rough. It’s not a great road to tow anything on, let alone a big boat! But it cuts an hour or so off the journey and that hour is better spent fishing than it is driving!
We arrived at Eaglehawk Neck at about 7am. Before you get to the boat ramp you travel through a little bunch of shacks called Doo Town. Every shack has to be named accordingly, so you’ve got names like “Doo Little”, “Xana Doo”, “Doo Luv It”, “Doo Us”… It’s turned into a bit a tourist attraction of its own! But it was the fish we were after, every year from March to June the southern bluefin tuna turn up and can be caught right in close to the sea cliffs that mark the edge of the peninsular.
We launched the boat and travelled only ten minutes from the boat ramp, out towards the Hypolites, a large rock which sticks out of the sea about 5 miles from the boat ramp. As soon as we got there we saw birds diving and tuna busting up the surface.
Days like this are rare when you try and make a fishing show. Usually you have wait for hours or even days before you catch what you want. But not today. We had bluefin hooked up after only 20 minutes of being in the water. We fished for only three hours and caught another 4, plus a big Albacore Tuna as well. It was great fishing and a great show which not only featured catching large tuna, but a full on wrestle with a seal which provided an interesting few moments before it finally gave us back our fish!
We were tired, but happy and the tow back to our home town of Launceston was full of stories about big tuna and before we knew it we were home! A big day, but a memorable one.
Hook, Line and Sinker airs on the Southern Cross TEN network in QLD, VIC and NSW. On Southern Cross TV in Tasmania and Darwin, and on Southern Cross Central throughout regional Australia. To find out more visit www.hooklinesinker.tv
