Chasing Unicorns

I have always been a dreamer. It has translated through all facets of my life but especially into my fly fishing. I find myself drawn to the unknown, be that new destinations, new species or new techniques. The more impossible something seems, the more I’m compelled to take on the challenge, no matter how foolhardy or expensive that endeavour may be!

Since moving my life to Fiordland almost 13 years ago, I have continually been told by various people, usually commercial fishermen, about the southern bluefin tuna of Fiordland. ‘You need to be there when those tuna push big schools of bait to the surface inside the fiords, it’s mayhem. They are big fish too bro. You’d love it!’ That is roughly how each conversation would go, and this would send my imagination spinning. I knew that if I could get myself in front of a busting school of tuna in the calm, inner-fiord waters, catching a southern bluefin on fly would be possible.

I slowly worked towards that dream. The first thing to sort out was the boat. I bought a Stabicraft Frontier 1600, which was big enough to handle anything that Fiordland could throw at it, but with an open casting deck at the front to allow proper shots at tuna. Next part of the plan was to find someone that was on the water a lot, to give us reports on when the fish were around. Up popped Craig Hind, an expat South African and mad keen fly fisho, who was working as a skipper on a cruise boat in Milford Sound.

FIVE YEAR ODYSSEY

I’d only had the boat for a few months and decided to take it to the North Island to chase some kingfish. I was in Hawkes Bay and it was my birthday when Craig sent me some video footage of bluefin busting up. I made the decision that night to drive for two days straight to get back home and head to Milford Sound. The night of my return it rained heavily and when we got to Milford the sound was flooded with fresh water and the tuna were nowhere to be seen!

This first setback was the start of a seemingly endless run of bad luck that continued for five years. We would get reports of tuna smashing bait, but by the time we arrived they had either moved on or the conditions had become unfishable for the fly. Over that period I made 30 trips specifically targeting southern bluefin and we only came close once, for the briefest of moments, when we found a small school of bluefin working bait inside Anita Bay at the heads of Milford Sound. I managed two decent casts into the bust-up before the fish disappeared as quickly as they arrived.

Over that five year journey, Craig Hind and Jeff Forsee were my main partners in crime. Those two characters are both gifted with ungodly amounts of enthusiasm. The chatter between us never hinted at defeat, but deep down I had an uneasy feeling that we were building castles in the sky.

SALVATION

When we first turned up in Fiordland with fly rods claiming we were going to tame some tuna, I’m sure there were plenty of raised eyebrows. However, as the years and trips wore on, more people were feeding us information and encouragement. Maybe it was admiration, maybe it was pity. In the end we were happy for whatever help we could get.

Early March 2022 and I received a report from some spearos that there were big schools of tuna moving down the Fiordland coast. By good fortune, Craig was working as skipper on a mothership charter boat in Dusky Sound and we had been invited by one of the owners, Fraser Mackenzie, to spend a few days in early April on the boat, filming for our TV show Pure Fly NZ. As the days ticked by, the tuna got thicker and we had confirmed reports of schools smashing bait inside the fiords. With a week to go before our trip, I was sent drone footage of SBTs chowing down on bait-balls and cartwheeling out of the water. The seven day wait was enough to drive me insane. Jeff and I exchanged hundreds of text messages.

The weather was perfect as we flew by helicopter into the Broughton Arm of Breaksea Sound to meet the mothership. Craig was there to greet us with a big smile and the news we’d been hanging on. The tuna were still there and we were going to go straight out to target them.

What transpired in the next few hours was so good that it almost seemed too easy after so many years of struggle. About a kilometre from the mouth of Breaksea Sound, in the calm lee of one of the small islands that stand guard to this mighty stretch of water, we caught sight of hundreds of birds working a bust-up. A mixture of sooty shearwaters, black billed gulls and terns were feasting on the carnage.

The three of us jumped into the tender, a small inflatable with a 10hp outboard, and drove straight into the middle of the working fish. Tuna slashed through the surface in every direction. Jeff had thrown a handful of casts when he exclaimed that he had a pack of tuna following his fly. They didn’t take but it felt like it was only a matter of time. A few casts after that he came tight. A nerve racking 20 minute fight ensued until Craig took a wrap of the leader and hoisted a 16 kg bluefin tuna onboard. Our screams could have been heard on the moon. Five years of emotions boiled to the surface. Hugging and high-fiving, the three of us were probably the happiest three people on earth in that moment.

Next up was Craig. We repositioned the tender about 50 metres upwind of the bust-up, with the aim of drifting slowly into it. Craig told us how rusty he was, having not cast a fly rod for a couple of months. He sent out a reasonable cast and then proceeded to practise his roly-poly retrieve. The roly-poly is a double hand retrieve that puts speed on the fly, something tuna love. Towards the end of the retrieve his rhythm improved. ‘You’re getting it now, Craig’ I offered as encouragement. At that moment a tuna engulfed the fly, smashing through the surface and spraying everyone in the boat. This was wild. Another tough fight and Craig was holding up his first tuna on the fly.

Finally it was my turn. The hard part of being the cameraman is that you’re always the last angler to get a spin when the fishing is good. Alas the tide was nearing the bottom of the low, and with less push, the bait had broken up into smaller schools and the bust-ups were smaller and more sporadic. We tried for an hour more until the lack of light forced us back to the mothership.

The next day we went looking for the fish in Breaksea, but couldn’t find them. Craig got on the radio and had a report from another skipper that there were big schools of tuna at the mouth of Dusky Sound. We steamed for three hours south through the Acheron Passage to Dusky. Upon arrival we were greeted with a feast for the eyes — another huge work-up with thousands of birds on it. A few other charter boats were there and we could see people hooked up.

We headed out in the tender again. This was the best action we had seen. Tuna were slicing through the water all around the boat. It seemed a forgone conclusion that I would hook up. However, I made many casts, often with a number of tuna following, but for some reason they didn’t commit. I had been fishing with a floating line so I changed to a sink-tip to see if that made a difference. A few casts and I came tight, a feeling that I had coveted for so long. It felt so right. At no point did I ever feel like I was going to lose that fish. I was enjoying every moment, looking around at the amazing landscape, breathing in the salty air, marvelling at the tuna cartwheeling through the air after annihilating some unlucky baitfish. I was completely immersed in the experience.Then the line went slack.

A blackness opened up inside me. This wasn’t going to happen for me. Panic. We were out of time again, the sun was sliding under the horizon. I knew the forecast for the next day was terrible — wind and rain. That night I wrestled with the reality that I might be leaving here without a SBT to my name, and it might be another five years until the next opportunity. At some point, I came to terms with that. I have been lucky enough to have caught many, many amazing fish from all around the world in my time, probably way more than my fair share. I clung to that realisation to give me enough strength to get up the next day and do my job.

The forecast was right — the next morning was 30 knots with rain squalls. I moped around the galley from dawn. If it was safe to do so, Craig was adamant that we’d give it another go. I told Jeff that I thought he should have the next shot. ‘No way Reygaert, we’re not coming back until you land one!’

The conditions were borderline for a small tender but luckily the tuna had herded the bait into a calm bay, which would allow me a decent chance to hook up. Second cast, a fish boiled on the fly right next to the boat. This battle was the polar opposite of the previous day. I felt like the hook would pull at any moment. Time was standing still. The wind was rocking the tender, making it hard to stand. Rain was lashing us from all angles. The tuna went deep and stayed there, slowly pulling the tender out of shelter and into the mouth of the fiord. There was a heavy slop smashing into the sides of the boat and it began to get really difficult to fight the fish.

An eternity later, we had colour. The look on Jeff’s face was of a man with one intent — that fish was coming in the boat, come hell or high water. In one smooth motion he tailed the tuna and slung it into the boat. The relief hit me suddenly, it welled up and, for the briefest moment, I cried. Then the elation hit. To get it done under those conditions with those two blokes was just the perfect ending to one hell of an adventure.

Buzzing back to the mothership, I looked at the tuna, now dead and bled out. I realised that all our attention had been focused on the logistics of the pursuit and, despite the long obsession with catching one on fly, I knew very little about the species and where the fishery sat in the global picture. I decided to do some research and what I found was an inspiring story of a fishery on the rise.

THE FISH

The southern bluefin tuna, Thunnus maccoyii, is found only in oceans in the Southern Hemisphere between latitudes 30°S and 50°S. It is a slow growing fish that can attain a length of 2.5 metres with a maximum weight of 260 kg. They spawn in the waters off Java and then embark on one of the greatest migrations on the planet. Some fish head around the Great Australian Bight, past Tasmania and on to New Zealand, while the rest make their way towards the southern Indian Ocean, all the way to South Africa.

Southern bluefin tuna are endothermic and can maintain their core temperature up to 10°C above the water temperature, enabling them to venture into colder waters than any other tuna. This advantage also allows them to maintain high metabolic output for predation and migrating large distances.

THE FISHERY

In the 1960s, bluefin were bountiful along the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. Back then there was never any consideration given to stocks depleting. Then came the fishing boom of the seventies that focused on catching tuna by purse seine net for canning. By the early nineties, the southern bluefin tuna was on the road to extinction. Tuna stocks dropped to as little as 5% of the original biomass.

One of the central problems faced with managing pelagic fisheries of this scale is that you need serious international cooperation. In the 1980s the three main SBT catching countries — Australia, Japan and New Zealand — began to cooperate to manage the fish and formed the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna, aimed at slowly ratcheting down the commercial quota to a more sustainable level.

Initially the Commission had little impact and there was a lot of scepticism and speculation that countries were not adhering to their quotas. However, science would prevail.

The CSIRO, based in Hobart, led the way with a method of gene tagging. Annually processing tens of thousands of DNA samples from SBT captured around the globe, CSIRO scientists are able to build very accurate estimates of species biomass, which in turn removes the human decision-making around setting quotas. Technological improvements in data collection and cameras onboard commercial vessels have also helped.

Slowly the SBT population has begun to rebound. Recreational fishers are encountering more fish, the tuna fishing around Tasmania has improved over the last six years and is getting better each season. No doubt the Fiordland fishery is following suit.

In 2020, the new stock assessment estimated the biomass to have increased to 20% of its unfished levels, and projected that it will reach the management target of 30% by 2035. It blows my mind that the fishery might get better.

It seems I am not the only dreamer around. The idea that the decimated SBT fishery could be revived would have seemed impossible in the ’90s. But somehow, through a massive amount of hard graft from commercial fishers, scientists and anglers, the fishery has been steered onto a positive trajectory. It is a story of hope in a world where fish stocks are constantly under increasing pressure. As recreational anglers we are going to benefit immensely, and a consistent SBT fly fishery may develop in Fiordland. I certainly intend to be there to find out if it does!