Longtail Tuna on Spin Gear

Hi there,

I was lucky enough to get invited one more time on Double Haul's boat today.
And it truly was a great day on the water, with my first ever Longtail Tuna on spin gears.
With a lazy start at around 9 am which had left me with plenty of time for a proper breakfast.

We launched from Dina Beach boat ramp, and first went behind the deck chair cinema, where we saw someone scuba diving between the little mangrove trees. Not something that I would enjoy myself, being way too afraid of the crocodiles to do so.
But the action on the fishing side was not really hot, in fact absolutely freezing in the sense that we didn't see a single fish...

So we went to Emery Point, where we quickly got onto some little trevally.
Double Haul must have out-fished me something like 5 to 1 there, but it was still very fun, and we put them all back in the water.
Just as we were on our way to leave the place direction East Point we saw Doors Off which I didn't recognise at first, because he was not in his boat. He told us that he already got a Tuna and a massive GT. I hope he got even more during the rest of the day.

So we went to East Point and didn't see any fish over there either...
And I started to wonder if I should have kept a few of these little Trev to get a feed for my little family...
With the lack of Action Double Haul made the decision to go to Lee Point, and this, was a very good decision.

Not long after we arrived there, we saw a school of tuna breaking the surface.
Before I could get my act together, Double Haul had made a cast and was on!
I was then hesitant to cast as not to interfere with his fish, when he told me to: "Cast in there mate, they are still around".
I did not wait for him to repeat the invitation and my little chrome slice flew trough the air and landed what I estimated to be too far...
So I retrieved as fast as I could thinking that I had missed my chance, and bang I was on too!

I am on.

Double hook up of Longtail tuna. And we boated the two of them!

Double hook-up's result.

Mine took nearly half of the line on the spool of my little reel, and I was wondering when would it stop. Then when he was close to the boat it looked like he was foul hooked by the tail, but no it was because during the fight he had wrapped his tail around my line.
This was my first longtail tuna on the spin gears...
I liked the Mactunas, but now I like the longtail ones even more.

Then I changed lure, I put the same one, but instead of a treble hook at the back of it, it had a single hook, the idea was that as I had secured a feed, I was from now on going to try to minimise the harm done to the fishes, and be able to safely release some...

And we then saw another school of what was very visibly some Tuna, and we casted to it...
And I got a Spanish Mackerel, the biggest one I ever got on my spin gears, and he didn't even cut my line. I had my line cut by smaler ones in the past, so I was pretty happy to boat this one.

Spanish Mackerel on spin gears.

Specially considering that he had the lure so far done his mouth that we had to cut the line before putting the fish in the esky, and I got the lure back only when dispatching the fish in the evening back at home.

We also tried to troll for Macks, but it didn't work.

After trying for Tunas and Macs for a little while more, we finally decided to go back.

So we returned early, before the masses and didn't had to wait too long at the boat ramp. The parking lot at the ramp, had been empty when we arrived in the morning, and now at 3:00pm was full.

So yes, that was a great day on the water, thank again Double Haul, I really had a good time chasing some of my favourite fishes.

And guess what I had for dinner tonight?

Tuna Sri Lankan way in the wok.

Yes I cooked it before Ms. Frugal Down Under and Dolly came back of the Happy Yes Market. And I loved eating it!

And yes I did get slightly sunburnt on the back of my neck.

But hey, It could be worse.

Have a good day,

Me.