Saratoga
Active Member
Thought I would create a thread to represent the great week we spent in Bamfield at our first Tuna Shootout. The host location was Mills Landing - a great facility to base the event from. Jerry has plenty of salt ice which is pretty much a mandatory requirement for this fishery. Thanks for all your help and patience with us newbies Jerry! We have been wanting to do this for many years and finally took the plunge this season. What an amazing experience! On our first day offshore (first day ever attempting to tuna fish), we boated 29 tuna! Many double and triple headers. Such a cool fishery and entirely different from anything we’re used to with salmon. The success we had was a direct result of all the help we received from everyone involved. Deryk (Derby) was awesome helping us prepare & answer questions over the past several months. I was able to have all the gear setup and ready to hit the water before we got there ... thanks again for all your help!! I run a 24’ Robalo walk around and didn’t want to install outriggers for my first attempt. Despite that, we managed to easily run 7 lines, 2 of which were diving planar boards off the stern cleats. We managed 3 full days offshore and had only a single line tangle that was easily corrected - so targeting these fish effectively is definitely feasible for newcomers without having to install outriggers (but I am looking at outriggers for next year as they are a definite advantage ).
All the other participants in the shootout were extremely helpful. The collaborative nature of the event was exactly what we were looking for. Thanks to DAK & Tuna Canoe in particular - they both acted as buddy boats for us to follow out on those dark mornings as we headed 60 miles offshore. Without their willingness to have us follow them to the grounds, we wouldn’t have been going offshore let alone experiencing the success we had once we got there. Once on the tuna grounds, all the boats freely shared coordinates to ensure everyone got into fish ... All In, DAK, Tuna Canoe, Straight Up, Big Coast, Ocean Pacific, Captain Kid, and others shared info freely & often to make sure everyone was into fish. Although the tuna shootout is technically a derby, it’s primary focus is clearly to bring people together to collectively have a great time and experience some of the coolest fishing you can imagine off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
On our final day offshore, we had a 7 header ... all 7 lines! With just two of us on board, it was chaos ... how cool is that! And as we started pulling in the lines to finish our final offshore day, we had a triple header. Just an awesome way to finish off the trip. We ended up with 52 tuna over 3 days.
I understand the intent for next year is to have an online presence with more information available heading into the shootout. I expect the participant boat count will go up significantly as a result. We will definitely be counting down the days until next year. What a great experience!!
All the other participants in the shootout were extremely helpful. The collaborative nature of the event was exactly what we were looking for. Thanks to DAK & Tuna Canoe in particular - they both acted as buddy boats for us to follow out on those dark mornings as we headed 60 miles offshore. Without their willingness to have us follow them to the grounds, we wouldn’t have been going offshore let alone experiencing the success we had once we got there. Once on the tuna grounds, all the boats freely shared coordinates to ensure everyone got into fish ... All In, DAK, Tuna Canoe, Straight Up, Big Coast, Ocean Pacific, Captain Kid, and others shared info freely & often to make sure everyone was into fish. Although the tuna shootout is technically a derby, it’s primary focus is clearly to bring people together to collectively have a great time and experience some of the coolest fishing you can imagine off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
On our final day offshore, we had a 7 header ... all 7 lines! With just two of us on board, it was chaos ... how cool is that! And as we started pulling in the lines to finish our final offshore day, we had a triple header. Just an awesome way to finish off the trip. We ended up with 52 tuna over 3 days.
I understand the intent for next year is to have an online presence with more information available heading into the shootout. I expect the participant boat count will go up significantly as a result. We will definitely be counting down the days until next year. What a great experience!!