Making the most of winter weather windows

OFFSHORE

Kelly

Hunt

When most people think of June in Tasmania, they assume there is no fishing to be done. Yes, the days are short and it can be bitterly cold, but there is a great deal of fishing to be done. Find a weather window and make sure you have all the right wet weather gear, and you will enjoy some great days out on the water offshore, or poking about your local estuary.

June in Tasmania is when a peculiar kind of sickness starts to spread. It starts with reports of a few people coming down with it. All the 37kg tuna outfits will come out as a precautionary measure to fight against disappointment. Lures will be rigged heavier and with bigger stronger hooks to fight the symptoms. I speak of the sickness that sweeps anglers across Tasmania at this time of year: jumbo fever!

We have seen the first few dustings of snow on Hobart’s Mount Wellington, and the old timers would always say this was sign to start looking for tuna. The usual haunts of Southport and Whale Head, and to Eaglehawk Neck and around the Hippolyte Rocks, are traditional grounds to try your luck at hooking a jumbo bluefin tuna.

Success story

The southern bluefin tuna, commonly called SBTs, used to suffer under the weight of heavy fishing pressure, with the reported catch reaching 80,000 tonnes in the 1960s. In the mid-1980s it was looking pretty dire for the species, and numbers of fish had drastically reduced. At that point, the main SBT catching nations got together and applied strict quotas on their fishing fleets in 1985, and then in 1994 this voluntary management arrangement was formalised, and the Conservation of Southern Bluefin established. This led to the fishery growing from strength to strength, and in Tasmania I have witnessed this recovery with my own eyes. Back in the olden days when I was a young man, I used to fish for SBT and not even look like catching one. Then we started to pick up a few schoolies, and the fishing continued to improve each year. Fast forward to today, and we have an all year, around the calendar southern bluefin fishery here in Tasmania. The jumbos are a lot