Pelagic Charters celebrates record season
The tuna fishery continues to get better and better for Pelagic Charters, read how their 2024 season went down!
Pelagic Charters is celebrating its best bluefin season yet.
"It was a pretty good year," Ethan from Pelagic tells The Adventurer.
"We had probably one of the better seasons out of everyone, I'd say for the charters. We did probably do more days on the water. We finished up with 152 for the season. Our best trip was 28 bluefin for one trip. We caught the biggest weighed bluefin in the country for the season. 152 kilos without the guts – that could have been 170 kilo fish.
Ethan says bluefin fishing is getting better every year.
"This season was by far our best season. I think it is getting better and it's probably something to do with the fishery being managed a little bit better internationally with quota systems, and plus the value isn't really there to catch them commercially. So what we've found is that a lot of the commercial fishermen in New Zealand don't really start targeting them until quite late in the season, so there's a little bit less commercial pressure there.
"One thing that we did notice this year is we on basically every single trip we have caught bluefin. I know that's not been the same for a lot of the other guys out there,” Ethan adds.
“Last season we had a couple of trips where we couldn't find the fish – but this year we've just noticed we're catching them basically every single trip.”
Ethan says they shut the doors for their season around mid August.
"It starts to get a little bit inconsistent after then. But they're just like clockwork every single year. They start around the second week of June to the middle of August."
Ethan says the team has been pretty busy, with people super interested in night time fishing following The Adventurer article last month.
"Obviously everybody caught a whiff of that nighttime stuff and wanted to get amongst that a lot more," he says. "We were doing back to back trips, and when everybody wants to fish every single night and all day, every single day, it can get a bit tough! But of course, it was good fun. Everybody got to experience some pretty good fishing."
Ethan says the appeal of bluefin is that it's a great trophy fish.
"When you have the potential to go out and catch a fish that weighs more than you, it becomes quite appealing. Plus, obviously bluefin tuna is a delicacy, so people like to get them to eat," he says.
"But we're also finding people are becoming a lot more responsible now and not wanting to kill everything they see come up to the boat. So they're happy taking a photo and sending it back."
Ethan says their release rate this year was around about 40%.
"We do set a very strict limit of one bluefin per person on those trips," he says.
"We're finding that some guys might have a group of six or eight on the boat, and they're happy with taking three fish and then just letting everything else go. It's more just to catch the trophy."
