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There’s an expression commonly used in fishing the world over, that came out of trout fishing somewhere along the way: “matching the hatch”. It refers to fly fishing streams or lakes that are experiencing insect larvae hatches, and the necessity to use a fly that matches the insect hatch to stand a chance of enticing a trout to bite.
It’s a term that lends itself to all fishing in varying degrees. If you don’t present to a fish something that it’s willing to wrap its laughing gear around, you won’t get a bite. In the trout/insect instance, that parameter may be absolute: if your presentation doesn’t look and behave a heck of a lot like that insect, no trout will bite it.
In saltwater, the fish aren’t usually as fussy, but most people defer somewhat to the fish’s preferences; like using whitebait, sardines or mulies for tailor fishing, not asking the fish to consider a feed of sand worms, river prawns or octopus.
One family that frequently demands more ‘matching of the hatch’ in saltwater is, funnily enough, tuna. I say funnily enough because the tuna family are mostly fish that need to eat a lot – they maintain a body temperature higher than the water around them, and can swim fast and far, all ways of being that burn up a lot of energy, and require a lot of food. So you’d think they’d eat whatever gets in front of them, and not be so fussy.
But fussy they are, and this leads a lot of would-be tuna anglers into frustration. Because nature, evolution and tuna have conspired to have most tuna that people encounter, such as stripeys, longtails and mackerel tuna, favour eating baitfish that are downright tiny.
Sure there are plenty of these two-to-ten-kilo tuna species that have been caught on big lures, and plenty of times when they’re not so fussy, but overall it’s true to say that if you want to target some of these blue-and-silver footballs, you will need to scale way down. And probably further than you think.
In WA in the middle of the year, there are a lot of anglers heading north, and tuna heading south. We’re not really talking about the barrel-sized yellowfin and bigeyes, although they can be equally fussy, but the common, prolific smaller species that harass schools of baitfish all along the coast: striped tuna down around the salmon schools, southern blues heading for Tasmania, mackerel tuna with their brilliant unique markings, longtails that leave light-tackle anglers with jaw agape.
All these little species will be encountered close to shore, so close they are sometimes caught by shore anglers. But most of the encounters are by boat anglers, and are made obvious by bird activity. The tuna are definitely feeding, and that’s why the birds are there; the tuna herd the bait to the surface, or the bait congregate at the surface because it’s safer there, and the birds pick a few off from above. If the tuna weren’t underneath them, the bait wouldn’t be at the surface, so you know the tuna are there, and they’re there because they’re feeding. So it has to be a sure bet, right?
Yet, if the scenario is stable enough to give you a good crack at it (sometimes these schools move rapidly), you can cast the life out of it, or troll it to foam, and not even get a knock. And at those times – which is most of the time – there is no substitute for matching the hatch.
So, to pick up a few tuna when you really want to, you need to be presenting something that more closely matches what they’re feeding on. Now obviously when dealing with a range of species that between them are found literally from one end of WA to the other, that amounts to a variety of baitfish, but they do have one thing in common: they’re small. Sometimes, tiny.
This can put casting out of the equation. Fly anglers, because they’re casting the weight of the line rather than the fly, stand a chance. They can present an offering that is, like the baitfish, tiny and featherweight. But they have their own share of challenges.
Spin fishermen, however, may not be in the race. The best lure for the purpose would probably weight about five grams. That can be a challenge to cast far enough on even ultralight gear, and ultralight gear is the wrong stuff to be trying to catch tuna on. They’re rather too strong for that. Fair enough if you don’t mind spending an hour to boat a four-kilo fish. Don’t forget to consider other people on board.
But trolling, like it or not, is in its element here. The trick is, as if you haven’t figured it out already, to troll as small a lure as will be strong enough to pull a strong fish in on. That means a saltwater fly, or a sliver of chrome with a single hook on it, or a very small skirted trolling lure with a bit of flash in it.
Wire is out. These critters have pretty good eyesight, and don’t like wire. Use a nylon or fluorocarbon leader less than half a millimetre thick. They don’t have much in the way of teeth anyway.
The hook has to be strong enough for the line and the fish, so tiny trebles are out. A single hook in the 1/0 to 6/0 sort of size range is the right thing. Tuna aren’t hard to hook, so just something strong, sharp and not offset will do fine. Mustad’s O’Shaughnessy is the usual sort of shape; Gamakatsu and VMC also do O’Shaughnessys, and Owner do an Aki Flat that is appropriate. They’re all flat, no offset, so they won’t spin when trolled.
Speed doesn’t matter much, and neither does action. The bait these tuna are feeding on don’t move all that fast or all that much, so it’s much more a matter of just scaling down as much as you can in the size of the lure, and then having it in the right place. This will work. Tuna do seem to like clear water rather than foam, though, so trolling further out the back than you might ordinarily put lures for other species is usually the right thing to do. That may be because the tiny lures aren’t easy to see amongst foam, but whatever the reason, it’s very often the ‘shotgun’ lure 30m behind the rest that is the first to be nailed by a tuna.
I spent some time amongst the tuna schools off Exmouth late last year, and at one stage got to have a good look at the baitfish they were feeding on. Often the only time we see these fish is when a few are found on the deck after a tuna has been brought on board, but this time we had one of those glassy days and a bit of lull to drift around and stare into the water. Some small pods of baitfish appeared around the boat, moving weightlessly in their medium. They were almost transparent, perhaps 30mm long, but in big numbers.
I had seen the same look on a dive elsewhere, and had been fortunate enough to see a group of six mackerel tuna feeding on them. The baitfish would be within a couple of metres of the surface, and the tuna would rocket up at a mind-boggling speed from somewhere down out of sight, nailing the baitfish in the blink of an eye and throwing a U-turn, barely below the surface, to disappear down into the blue again. It’s a brilliant thing to watch underwater, if you ever get the chance.
The tuna we caught off Exmouth that day were on trolled skirted lures maybe three times the size of those miniscule baitfish, but a lure 50% bigger again would not be touched. I have no doubt that if we trolled lures that were half the size again, we would have caught the fish twice as fast.
Having a handful of baitfish-like saltwater flies in the box may be just the ticket for those days when it all looks right, but you just aren’t getting results.
© Hal Harvey
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