The Protea Reef tuna revisited

The Protea Reef tuna revisited

As we cruised up to the north pinnacle of the famous Protea Reef tuna concentration, the surface boiled and I threw with the wind. It was my first cast so I checked the drag and started cranking, hauling my Mydo Luck Shot to the surface where I could see the commotion it was causing. Bubbles were trailing behind it, the Lure was changing direction as it’s designed to and it was throwing up a plug like splash to round the performance off.

I hardly had time to appreciate it all happening right in front of me so when I saw the Skipjack boil and swallow my lures, I just about flipped out.

Short work of the Skipjack, which was a few kilos overweight to be live bait. Then all the rods went away, and my dad and I, the only crew today, had our hands full of crossed lines, angry little skipjack, and a few yellowfin tuna about football size.

So we had some fresh fish to smoke – our mission this early Friday morning…but we chanced it one more time, all the while hearing on the radio that the sharks were wild down south. A rod started pulling a bit – the big reels had their drags tightened up – so I grabbed the big stick and started pulling. No chance. A shark came in right under the propellors and grabbed our poor baby yellowfin tuna. It screamed a hundred metres of line off in excitement so we gave chase, hoping for as much line back, and maybe a chance at getting our lure back.

After winding all the line back in against the shark, suddenly it felt like it had just let go. But I still had some pressure, which turned out to be a badly chopped but intact yellowfin.

That was the end for us. Once those sharks find out your strategy for the day, they latch on and just milk the situation for every tuna, skipjack, bonito or lure they can.

I grew up on this reef, and an absence of a season or two gave me some perspective on the situation at Protea.

There are still the sharks. They still own the place.

There are some huge charter boats burning up and down. There seems more and more each year. Feeding the sharks. One guy had lost five lures.

A few locals and even one commercial chap was dragging artificials for tuna, using bottom sticks with Scarborough reels.

The bonito were about. Baby tuna. And Skipjack. On the pinnacles as usual.

But mainly I saw plastic. All shapes and sizes and colours. Big bags. Small bags. Pieces. Tiny pieces. Yoghurt containers. Plastic foil. The works. We had to dodge a few plastic obstacles a few times to avoid hooking the stuff.

And then, as we throttled up to head for home – two really big loggerhead turtles popped up to say goodbye. We chatted and told them not to eat the plastic. They kind of said yeah, yeah, and swam back below the waves.