The sunrises over an angler setting up his fishing rods in anticipation of the Algoa Bay Tuna Classic.

Yellowfin tuna hunt is for tough men, and a vixen

You need a hide that withstands bruising and a stomach that rides big swells. Strength and patience also help, writes Michael Roux van Zyl. Keen amateur fisherman Mike Holmes took the pictures

THE great yellowfin tuna hunt has been taking place off the Port Elizabeth coast since the dawn of time. Aeons ago, schools of yellowfin, longfin tuna, yellowtail, dorado and Atlantic big eye tuna learnt to move within the warm Agulhas current of the Indian Ocean that flows past Port Elizabeth to where it meets the cold Benguela current off the southern Cape.

The tuna move within the current to hunt their main food sources such as pilchards, squid, garfish and other kinds of bait fish.

Only recently, tuna became the hunted as boatloads of men and women braved deep-sea conditions carrying several thousands of rands worth of fishing rods, reels and brightly coloured lures with the hope of landing the biggest tuna in the school.

Although tuna have been “hunted” as a leisure activity for as long as there have been fishermen off the Eastern Cape, competition amongst the anglers became serious in the last decade only.

Legend has it that members of the Port Elizabeth Deep Sea Angling Club challenged each other to see who could land the biggest tuna during one of their typical late night, post-fishing celebrations at the club’s pub, Marlins Head.

The beery idea took shape in May 1992 with the first official Pedsac competition, called “Hunt the yellowfin”.

Since then the competition name has evolved and it was briefly known as the Continental Tuna Classic until it eventually stuck with the current name, the Standard Bank Algoa Bay Tuna Classic.

Each year the event has grown steadily and last year Pedsac was approached by a Johannesburg marketing company, Channel Plus, with a proposal to grow the competition commercially.

“We were looking for an event to evolve a marketing strategy around and saw that the Tuna Classic had a lot of potential.

“The marketing drive is to create a festival atmosphere and make fishing a sport attended by the public,” said Manny Cross, who owns Channel Plus with Lindi Shortt.

In the space of a year a big banking group became the main sponsor and Channel Plus re-branded the event with considerable focus on the competition’s on-shore activities at a bustling venue called Tuna Land, in the Port Elizabeth harbour.

A Rodman boat named The Beast is trolling in the Agulhas current about 50km south of Cape Recife.

While the competition grows as a spectator sport with the public eagerly gathering at the weighing tent every afternoon, the real action takes place off shore with no land in sight, in a solitary water world.

Weekend Post chief photographer Mike Holmes has attended the competition as an angler virtually since its inception. From May 17-21 this year he captured the essence of the classic on his camera, while looking for the elusive “big one”.

Holmes explained that a typical day in search of tuna starts early in the morning, just before dawn, when the anglers head out to sea until they reach about 88 kilometres from Cape Recife.

“You can actually see the warm current as you drive into it. The water is crystal clear and its temperature rises above 20ºC,” Holmes said.

“But the conditions are harsh. In Algoa Bay the sea is calm, but out there the waves are like moving mountains and valleys. It can cause severe seasickness.”

Besides being exposed to extreme weather conditions, anglers have to catch and land the tuna on a boat that is forever being tossed by the swells.

“The competition is extremely taxing and the anglers undergo abnormal exercise. The weight of a tuna swimming away from you, boring into the water, makes the muscles in your arms cramp until they feel lame.

“You come back black and blue after a day of fishing, but it is all about the adrenaline and pain,” Holmes said.

A few women also brave the waters. In 2003 Denise Milton, of Shelley Beach, southern KwaZulu-Natal, (she is known among the men as The Vixen), became the first woman to win the competition.

This year the total weight of tuna caught over three days of fishing amounted to almost six tons. That made it the best year of the competition for some time. The two preceding years produced lean pickings for the participants.

This year Tielman Niewoudt took the honours with a yellowfin tuna weighing in at 65kg.

It took him nearly two-and-a- half hours to land it. It won him the first prize of a R100 000 boat.

Sometimes the bruises the fishermen collect are worth the pain.

“In the end it’s skill that makes a winner,” said Holmes. “It’s one thing to hook the fish, but it takes skill to land it.”

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Life