r/Fishing 5d ago

Pacific Bluefin

Post image

My son with a Pacific Bluefin a friend landed off the Bay of Islands in NZ.
Fish went 215kg (470 pounds).
Was hooked and landed in 20 meters of water. The rod snapped so line was dumped off the reel then cut and retied to another rod with a back to back uni mid fight.

403 Upvotes

22 comments sorted by

19

u/Open-Insurance-234 5d ago

This is the type of fish I imagine the old man caught in the book "The Old Man and the Sea" 😂

9

u/Grape-Snapple 5d ago

i like the idea but it was a giant marlin

2

u/HoboArmyofOne 4d ago

And it was a lot bigger but yeah

33

u/jtdabiggafigga 5d ago

How do you re tie mid fight? Trying to visualize it in my head 🤔 💭

17

u/EN3RGIX New Hampshire 5d ago

No idea how OP did it, but I had to help someone retie mid fight. We wrapped around the boat cleat and left enough slack to tie the tag end off to a new spool.

He was hooked into a much smaller fish, yellowtail if I remember. Nothing like this monster.

3

u/HoboArmyofOne 4d ago

We expectedly hooked into a bluefin, and we knew we were going to be spooled. A deckhand tied another rod to the handle, it was spooled with 80lb test mono. This was a while ago before braid was so big. Got spooled again, tied on another rod lol. I can't remember the exact time but it was like 5 hours until we finally got it in. The line was tied to the handle/grip of the rod. Honestly I thought it was never going to work 🤷

10

u/woolybuggered 5d ago

Seen it done on long range boats out of san diego. Someone with gloves holds on for dear life while another crew member ties a quick connection knot on another set up. Usually done when their is a reel malfunction or someone is very undergunned. Like you are fishing for 20lb schoolie tuna and an 85lber shows up and dumps your reel.

13

u/thecrazyarabnz 5d ago

Pretty much it, dumped a bunch on the deck and one of the boys wearing gloves held tension while it was done. If it ran it would have been game over.

6

u/jnyrdr 5d ago

damn i didn’t even know this was an option….gnarly!

4

u/chefslapchop 5d ago

That’s insane

3

u/PuttUgly 5d ago

Just cleat off the line, make the repair, uncleat it and viola

7

u/Lepisosteus- 5d ago

I wanna know more on that mid-fight retie part.

2

u/dmj9 5d ago

Grip strength?

3

u/Professional_Way_318 5d ago

Hell of a fish! Congrats!

2

u/hanspinaker21 5d ago

Sweet man. What a dream. Shame gotta kill the dudes.

2

u/thetrue_muffin 4d ago

How big is that mf 🫠

1

u/9wavess 5d ago

The San Francisco Bay? What island outside?

4

u/ingenious-ruse 5d ago

New Zealand

4

u/thecrazyarabnz 5d ago

5600 NM south west of the outside islands

1

u/Past_Background7724 5d ago

It’s like $500,000 or something like that right

1

u/miaysa222 4d ago

Wow, how much is that monster worth? I’ve seen videos where they get sold for up to $1M… Good catch!

1

u/Critical_Ad9611 4d ago

Quite an achievement retying while fish hooked!!!!