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IN a catch not heard of for many years, a large southern bluefin tuna was hooked inside of Montague Island on Monday morning.
An epic battle ensued with Bermagui local Dick Brown on board his 36’ Blackwatch game boat Reel Weapon battling the tuna for around five hours.
Watching it all unfold was Les Bernstein of Melbourne fishing on board his mate’s boat Thunnus II.
Les who owns the HD Video Camera Sunglasses company that builds sunglasses mounted with cameras filmed it all and we hope to get some of the footage soon.
He said Monday lunch time, the tuna had not been weighed but was probably around the 100kg mark.
It was hooked by the crew on Reel Weapon on the Narooma side of the island on a pusher-style skirt lure meant for the big kingfish making a show at the island over recent weeks.
Les snapped a couple of shots showing how close the game boat came to the island during the fight.
The witnesses said the big tuna would have come in to water as shallow as 20 metres.
Dick was known to be one of the locals who used to target yellowfin and other big fish off the northeastern corner of the island in his boat Lady Gail back in the 1980s.
He was then known to catch three yellowfin over 90kg but it’s been a while since there has been any big tuna action at the island.
The tuna ended up going 91.4kg and was caught by angler Jason Madex on 24kg line. It was weighed in at the Bermagui Big Game Angling Club weigh station.
Anglers are reminded that the bag limit for southern bluefin tuna was recently amended and is now one fish per person.
Story update:
We just spoke the "gaff man" on Reel Weapon who was Matt Verde, who explained a bit more about the epic battle.
Matt said Dick wanted to take out his son-in-law Jason Madex to try for either a bluefin or kingfish as he not yet caught either of those fish.
With a southerly forecast, Matt suggested they head to Montague Island as there had been some good kingfish caught there the day before.
Heading along the western side, they decided to throw out a small skirted lure with the hope of catching a bonito or big kingifish.
Fortunately the big fish took the lure on one of their big game rods but even so they were not sure what kind of fish it was although the slow tail kicks meant they were pretty sure it was a tuna of some kind.
Matt confirms the battle did indeed take around five hours with the fish taking the lure just after 8am and the battle lasting till just after 1pm.
The reason for the length of the battle was that the fish seemed determined to stay in the small bay on the western side of the island, where it circled anticlockwise for at least two hours in water as shallow as 20 metres with the bottom clearly visible.
Matt himself got a 60kg bluefin tuna in deeper water off Bermagui the week before and that battle only lasted 10 minutes.
In the end they headed out to deeper water and started dragging the fish up to the service with Reel Time and then backing down on it to take up line.
They did this about six times but each time the fish seemed content to simply keep swimming south at a slow and steady pace, despite being hooked with the drag turned up to the max.
And yes the resident seals did start to get interested and in particularly one big bull seal that they think was responsible for some bite marks in the big tuna's side.