It was a sad day for tuna

At 5 am, March 24, 2011, Nate, Kris and Javier met Jamie and his dad, Don, at Awase port. We chartered a fishing boat for the day. The Sencho (capatain) took us out to the payaos, which are submerged platforms in about 3500 meters of water. As far as I can understand, payaos are in the water to provide fish habitat and good fishing grounds. It was dark and cold, so Jamie and Don took a nap on the 1.5 hour ride out to sea.



We were on a very nice fishing boat, probably about 45 feet long complete with a remote control for the throttle. Below is the Sencho with the remote control. The glass ball on the line at the bow of the boat is a squid light. One of the types of charters this boat does is night fishing for squid and then using the squid to catch big tuna from about 500 meters.



Payao fishing is pretty simple...the boat drives up to a payao and then drifts away in whatever direction the current and wind takes it. Sencho gives a signal and everyone drops their lines in the water with a silverside on the hook (see below).



It wasn't long before the fish started biting. Shoals of Katsuo (Skipjack tuna...Katsuwonus pelamis) were all over the surface of the water. We kilt 'em! Below you'll see Don pulling in a Katsuo, then Kris with her first, then Nate, and then Jamie with his first.




When Sencho gave the signal, we all pulled in our lines and he brought us back to the payao and we dropped the lines in again. As we would drive, someone would trawl with a squid lure. We pulled in at least 5 more Katsuo this way. Among the many Katsuo caught, there were also some Maguro (Yellowfin tuna...Thunnus albacares). Maguro make great sashimi! You could tell if you had one on the line because they seem to be a lot stronger and pull a lot more line out. Below is Nate pulling in a Katsuo after trawling and Kris with her first big Maguro!



It was a fun and successful day. We didn't get back to the dock until about 5 pm. We then laid out the catch to see what we ended up with. Between the five of us, we caught 66 fish! Ten of those were Maguro and the rest were Katsuo.




You'll notice that Kris caught the biggest fish of the day, although they were all big'uns! We divvied up the fish and then had to go home and clean them all...sigh. We got the hang of it pretty quickly and between Nate and I we finished cleaning in about two hours. Most of the Katsuo was pretty easy because we just took out the gills and guts and cleaned them up to give as presents. We gave some to our neighbors, our friends at Mou (the restaurant down the street), and Obuchi-san. They were all pretty excited about it!

We ended up with a LOT of fish! Below is all of the Maguro meat from four fish. Sashimi heaven and a freezer full of fillets. At the end of the blog is a video of Nate in a very fancy fishing chair.