Fishing for tuna too nice to turn down

Wanaka reporter Marjorie Cook was angling for a different story, but the lure of catching tuna off the West Coast proved too much of an attraction.

Stories, like fish, don't magically land on your plate.

You have to be prepared to put the work in.

And the best thing about being a reporter is you never know what might unfold in one day.

It's a bit like fishing.

You could set your heart on a tuna but might end up with a wormy old barracuda.

Or 77 albacore.

So it was that I turned up at Westland district councillor Kerry Eggeling's place a week or so back, thinking we were going to talk about tourism.

Instead, the commercial fisherman handed me a lunch box and a life jacket and said I was going fishing.

All day.

It took all of a second to agree, without remorse.

And another second to thank the fates that Haast doesn't have cellphones so I wouldn't have to explain what I was doing against what I could only imagine would be quite vocal opposition from the boss in Dunedin.

I found out later that not one but three Dunedin editorial department managers would have cheerfully filleted me if it had meant they could be in my shoes.

I had never before thought about why tuna fishing makes some people go all silly.

I'd only ever eaten it out of a can.

I had no idea the fish were shaped like torpedoes, had retractable fins so they could speed like a bullet through the water or had the most amazingly jewel-like blue and green colours I have ever seen outside a polished paua shell.

All I knew about tuna fishing was what a friend had told me: tuna fishermen eat pie sandwiches.

That turned out not to be true on Mr Eggeling's boat, Mako.

They were ham, lettuce, tomato and pickle sandwiches.

It was a typical West Coast summer's day: hot, blazing sunshine and a calm, clear, bright-blue sea.

Mako has no facilities other than a large plastic bin filled with ice and a pile of buckets to sit on.

It's small - just big enough for skipper and one crew - but with two extendable booms, it can support about 10 lines of varying lengths.

Each line is attached to the boat by a large black rubber band, which snaps and straightens each time a fish takes hold of the plastic, fringed lure.

The lures are all colours of the rainbow.

The hooks don't need barbs.

The tuna chase the lures, overtake them, turn around, gobble them head on and then get spun back around, causing the hooks to dig into their jaws and the lines to snap.

"They are an amazing fish, built for speed," Mr Eggeling remarked, as we motored out of the Okuru River mouth towards the troughs and ocean canyons where the tuna like to run.

Mr Eggeling says his annual catch is variable.

He got 23 tonnes the year before last, when the tuna arrived early, in November, but last year he only caught three tonnes.

This year, the run has just started and he already has one tonne.

November is when the tuna usually start their run up north, at Kaitaia, swimming against the Humboldt Current that flows up the coast from Milford Sound.