Ever been shore fishing and had a bluefin tuna grab your bass? This bloke has, and he’s now wondering whether these incredible fish might affect how bass behave

I know the bloke who wrote the words below, and he has kindly said it’s fine for me to publish them on this blog. There is no point in me trying to big up what happened to this seriously good Cornish angler the other day, other than to say that with the amount of bluefin tuna turning up around our shores I guess it had to happen sometime - one of these truly awesome and magnificent fish goes and grabs a hooked bass. I hear tales from numerous bass anglers about how so and so bass tore yards of line off them in a mad dash for freedom, but try as I might there is no way to describe just how hard and fast a fish like a bluefin tuna swims and fights. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but as this lad concludes at the end of his amazing and shocking experience below, if the bluefin tuna do indeed use bass as a handy food source, could this be affecting how “our” bass behave? Read on and be thankful this didn’t happen to you, because as good an angler as you think you might or might not be, you ain’t ever going to land even a very modest bluefin tuna on the sort of gear we use for our bass fishing from the shore!

What happened below happened not a million miles from this spot above…………..

From a Cornish bass angler who mainly fishes around a rugged, quiet, and out of the way part of Cornwall: “Over the past few years, we have been seeing increasing numbers of various kinds of Tuna around the most southerly tip of Cornwall. They usually start to appear off shore, during July, at the same time as the huge shoals of bait fish start to show . Towards the end of July into August, the baits and Tuna move closer in shore. The Tuna can be seen daily, sometimes numerous times each day. They stay with us, as late as November into December, as we all saw last season, when the Ring Netters were hard at it.

I try and get out fishing whenever possible, so I keep a close eye on the weather forecasts and tide charts. Mountain biking, along with climbing the cliffs to my fishing marks keeps me pretty fit and is also a very good way of getting around the cliff paths, to see which mark or marks might fish best on the day, depending on the conditions and by doing this, I’m pretty well up on what’s happening and what’s turning up around our bit of coastline.

I've been wondering over the past couple of years, if when the Tuna turn up, it has any effect on the bass, do they chase bass or do they concentrate feeding on the shoals of bait fish and mackerel? There are lots of days, when conditions are good, the tides are favourable and the bait fish are close in, so there should be bass about but, regardless of the marks I fish and the hours I put in, I just can’t catch any bass, are the Tuna driving them away?

Whilst sat having Sunday lunch today, Sunday 16th August, I decided I’d fish one of my deeper water marks for an hour up to the top of the tide and fish the first hour or so of the drop. So I pack up my kit, hop on my bike and off I go. I get near the mark and can see bait fish from the top of the cliff, so I'm feeling pretty confident of a catching a fish or two. So down I go over the cliff and down onto the mark, armed with my new 11ft Shimano Genos, 4000 Stella, filled with Sufix 131 braid and a plastic pencil case full of various lures, all around 30g .

The first hours fishing up to high tide has been pretty disappointing, with little happening over slack water but, now the tide has started dropping, I'm starting to have a fish or two, I seem to be having best results and most interest with the Storm Biscay Minnow, in the green mackerel colour. Constantly casting and retrieving in an ark from left to right and having a good look around whilst I'm doing so, for shoals of bait fish or birds working on them, about two hundred yards out to my right, the surface has just erupted into a wall of white water, Giant Tuna are smashing fish at the surface but as quickly as it started all has calmed again and they've disappeared, so I carry on fishing away, some half hour or so has passed and directly out in front of me, at about sixty yards or so, a Giant Bluefin Tuna has just jumped out of the water at great speed, leaping some six or seven feet high, I can see the markings as plain as day and back in with a big splash, which I can hear very clearly.

Totally blown away at the closest sighting of a Giant Bluefin Tuna I’d ever seen, or was ever likely to see and just thinking to myself how I wish someone had been here with me to share the experience, I carry on fishing away, catch a couple more fish and thinking I will stay long enough to catch just one more and then pack up and head for home, I cast and have hooked into, what I know is a bass and start to reel in, Its putting up a good scrap, as I get it close to the rock I’m stood on, it comes to the surface, I can see it's about 2.5 to 3lb, with a couple more turns of the handle, I dip the end of the rod, so I can lift it straight out of the water and on to the rock, when from nowhere and all with two or three seconds, there is a massive bow wave, a huge swirl of water and a Giant Bluefin Tuna at the surface, doing a very fast sharp U turn, under my feet and right in front of me, my rod bends double, my reel is singing and heading off out of sight with my bass, is a Giant Bluefin Tuna. I’m stunned, thinking Oh F**ck what do I do? I can’t let go of my rod with one hand to grab a knife, which I haven’t even got with me anyway, coz the rod will be pulled out of my hand, I can’t even let go to release the bail arm or release the tension on the spool, so I just point the end of the rod in the direction the Tuna is heading and wait for the spool to empty of braid, all the time knowing, I’ve got 50lb braid backing and its tied to the spool, it’s my brand new reel which I’ve just paid over five hundred quid for, Oh shit its gone down well into the backing and the reel is still singing, when all of the sudden the spool stops spinning, the singing stops and all I can hear is my heart pumping and me muttering unrepeatable words. I just can’t believe what has just happened, a few seconds pass, I put tension on the braid, winding it back in through my fingers, unsure how much braid I have left to wind back in but, to my amazement, looking at the spool, I don't appear to have lost much this side of the leader.

After standing, staring out to sea, with my rod in my hand and trembling with the adrenaline rush for a few minutes, I just have to make a couple of very excited phone calls to friends to tell them of my Close Encounter With A Giant Bluefin Tuna.

I would think that I am one of very few people in the UK to have had a Giant Bluefin Tuna on the end of their bass rod :biggrin. So, now I know, Tuna do chase bass, so they might well affect my fishing during the months they’re here around Cornwall.”