iStockphoto / FtLaudGirl
A teenager from Auckland, New Zealand is going viral after landing a nearly 115-pound (52kg) yellowfin tuna while fishing in the middle of a massive pod of dolphins on his jet ski. He caught this beast of a fish while trolling from his jet ski with his grandfather in the Hauraki Gulf on NZ’s North Island and they were out there looking for kingfish (yellowtail).
It is worth a quick reminder that it is currently mid-Summer right now in the Southern hemisphere. So while the thought of solo fishing for tuna right now anywhere here in the United States seems frigid, the conditions are ideal in the Southern Hemisphere.
18-year-old Hector de Mornac was filming from his jet ski while trolling through the massive pod of dolphins and has since shared the footage on his YouTube channel. You can see the porpoises feeding alongside his PWC as he’s trolling and then bam, a big tuna takes the bait.
Battling a 100+ pound yellowfin tuna from the comfort of a center console with a fighting belt and room to walk around the gunwale is difficult enough. But this bro was able to reel in the 115-pound yellowfin without flipping his ski or losing control of the situation. This is one of the most impressive catches I’ve seen in a long time:
Speaking with the NZ Herald, Hector says he and his grandfather left the docks at 5am in search of ‘kingies’ aka kingfish which we call yellowtail here. He said the fishing action was completely dead for the first 2.5 hours so they decided to switch it up and look for snapper.
After that, they decided to look for some more kingfish and says he “saw a big flock of gannets. They were torpedoing and twisting around and diving.”
The quick rules of fishing off shore: (1) look for birds, (2) don’t spook the fish, and (3) try to identify what the fish are feeding on. It’s not rocket science.
Once they got close to the birds they spotted the dolphins. It’s at that point they knew tuna were around. Dolphin and tuna often hunt together. It’s common to throw out cedar plugs for tuna whenever you spot dolphin as tuna will often strike anything that moves fast when they are whipped up into a feeding frenzy.
Hector said “I put two rods out and we decided to trawl. The birds were moving away from us, so I decided to move towards where the birds were and then a whale came up about 40 metres to our left.” Then one of the reels started screaming and the rest was history!