Landing a whopping Southern Bluefin Tuna

Thanks to Sydney Spearo Justin Ewan on sending through his epic story of landing his first ever Southern Bluefin Tuna - and a whopping one at that - 42kgs!

Read on to view his epic retelling.

Absolutely stoked that I got the chance to shoot my first southern blue fin tuna in NSW over the weekend!

Woke up at 1am and headed south, the plan was initially just to fish for bluefin because the past few days no one had had them up on the surface and the chances to spear them was low. We launched early on @jackloveday1 boat and trawled lures from first light up until close to midday along with 100’s of other boats. At this stage morale was getting low with only hearing reports over the radio that only two boats had found fish.

At around midday we had started to trawl away from the crowds and unexpectedly one of the reels starts screaming, Jack got on the rod and started to bring the fish up and as that fish was being dragged up we could see more than one silhouette following his fish.

Jack then told me to jump in, so I’ve stripped down into my undies as quick as I could, threw on just the Saltskin wettie top, mask, snorkel, and fins and jumped in with only a 1300 Riffe reel gun. I could see the fish at roughly 10 meters but as a took a quick breath and swam down they started pushing down towards the 20m mark staying wary so I took a shot at the closest fish from above.

Being totally unprepared to dive for blue fin I had to fight the fish on a reel gun in my undies with no gloves and also trying to keep my fish away from Jacks line. My fish peeled all the line off the reel with leaving under 1m of line left on the reel but fortunately it didn’t go any further. After 40 odd minutes the fish dies from the fight and I get it up to the surface, Jack pulls my fish over the side of the boat while still fighting his fish on 15kg line. 20 minutes later we get both fish on deck, stress levels are back down and we’re cheering!

This was one of those days I won’t forget, such a roller coaster of emotions in one session. Thanks again to @jackloveday1 for taking us out for the day! My fish weighed in at 42kg.