“We decided to try for some Kingi again and while we were moving back to the spot, I saw a big flock of gannets. They were torpedoing and twisting around and diving.”
When they arrived, de Mornac noticed there were dolphins. He knew dolphins and tuna hunt together.
“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,” he said.
Hector de Mornac reckons it took less than 10 minutes to land his giant 52kg tuna.
“One of the rods just started streaming off, so I asked Grandad to wind in the other one and then turned off the jetski and started to wind in the tuna line.
“When I turned off the jetski it started spinning and the other line got caught and tangled around the motor and other rods. I thought we were going to lose the fish.”
De Mornac estimated the fight with the 52kg fish lasted less than 10 minutes.
“It went on three huge runs. When it finally got to the boat, it started to circle and we saw what it was. We saw the big yellow fins.”
When the pair managed to pull the fish from the water using a gaff, it began to crack. They moved their feet out of the way and shoved the fish into the footwell.
De Mornac and his grandfather took a precarious 40-minute voyage back to land with the jetski tilting to one side from the weight of the fish.
The teenager’s fish scale only goes up to 23kg so he was forced to stand on a heavier scale, holding the fish and subtracting his weight.
Hector de Mornac and his grandad went fishing by Little Barrier Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
“I weighed myself and I was at 82kg and I weighed myself and the tuna and I was 134kg,” he said.
The breaking strain on his rod’s main line was 50 pounds (22.6kg) and the lead line was 120 pounds (54.4kg), so de Mornac had worried the rod would snap during the battle.
“When people go trawling for tuna, they usually have big trawling equipment and huge rods.”
He has already filleted the fish and packed the family’s fridges full of yellowfin tuna and given some to other relatives and friends.
“We’ve got a little drinks fridge in the garage that we had to completely empty out.”
De Mornac is a keen fisher who has been posting videos and advice on his YouTube channel, gonefishing3797, since he was 14.
He plans to keep the tail, dry it and save it as a souvenir and reckons it could be the biggest yellowfin tuna caught from a jetski in New Zealand.
Sport Fishing Council communications and operations manager Mike Plant said it was an “incredible catch”.
“A 52kg yellowfin tuna from a jetski is something worth celebrating. It’s a fantastic achievement.
“While there seem to be good numbers of yellowfin tuna around this season, landing a fish of this size on light gear is no small feat — it’s a real test of skill and patience.”
Plant said the organisation did not formally track the type of vessel used, but “a catch like this from a jetski is certainly noteworthy”.
