Bluefin catch - not something you'd forget

Napier's Wayne Bicknell (right) with a record 83.2kg southern blue-fin tuna he caught on Sunday. Photo/Doug Laing

Six Hawke's Bay fishermen with a range of experience dating back as much as 40 years have come home from a weekend jaunt with the biggest tuna ever caught by rod and line and landed in Napier after a once-in-a-lifetime weekend off the Hawke's Bay coast.

The southern bluefin weighing 83.2kg was caught between Hawk Sea Valley and the Ritchie Banks about 20 miles east of Portland Island on Sunday afternoon by Wahoo skipper Wayne Bicknell.

It smashed the record for the biggest tuna landed at the Hawke's Bay Sports Fishing Club where it was weighed-in the dark about five hours later and in front of about 100 people who had gathered as news of the catch and the boat's ETA of 6pm spread among club members.

More than double the previous club record, set during the three-day Megafish tournament in February, it was one of three club-record fish boated on the voyage.

The others, both caught on Saturday, were a 24.8kg blue nose from the deep as much as 300 metres below and boated by Mr Bicknell's brother, Dave, and a 12.4kg gemfish caught by Gavin Kean.

But the prize catches were only part of the story for Wayne, Dave and Joe Bicknell and fellow fishermen Kean, Scott Davidson, and Mike Christie, who had cleaned and packed the gear, and were about an hour into the voyage home and reflecting on what was already the best trip of the club's season, when they saw the stunning sight of a hundred or more bluefin leaping out of the water.

Wayne Bicknell, who has caught a northern bluefin of more than 300kg off the west Coast, said they had "given up" and were doing about 20 knots in water at a depth of about 1000 metres on the way home when Mr Christie saw the sea of white.

The skipper said it was probably the bluefin school forcing pike-like saury fish to the surface and bursting through them as they fed.

"It was a spectacular sight," he said. "It's not something you'd ever forget."
Brother Dave said: "I've been fishing a long while, but I haven't seen that before, straight up, out of the water, there must have been a hundred of them."

Wayne Bicknell said it was a hard turn and "mayhem" as the crew scrambled to get the gear out again to do their own fish-hunting, landing a prize which was by late Sunday night already "butchered and divied-up," while the blue nose was heading to the taxidermist with a future on the wall at the club.