with the tuna processing as the bigger
Cape ski-boats and commercial boats
are, so sometimes it’s just not practical
to try to bleed the fish on the boat.
We also have to consider our esca-
lating shark problem, and bleeding or
gutting tuna anywhere near our fishing
grounds is going to give the sharks even
more reason to follow the boats.
In my opinion bleeding tuna on a
fishing ski is ludicrous and would be a
major safety concern. When I catch a
tuna out on my ski I gaff the fish in the
head, hit it with the shillelagh until it is
dead, remove the hooks and slide it into
the hatch. Putting a lively tuna in the
region of 20-30kg into your fishing ski
hatch could result in a disaster should
the fish start thrashing around and dam-
aging the fibreglass. I have heard many
stories of guys having damaged hatches
after tuna have thrashed around, the
solid tail acting like a mallet.
My brother Brett and I have tried
bleeding the tuna by severing the two
major arteries that run just under the
pectoral fins, but to be honest this made
a huge mess on the boat and did not
really improve the quality of our fillets.
After years of trying all the tech-
niques the commercial and longline ves-
sels use we came up with the following
procedure which works well for us:- Gaff the fish in the head.
- Humanely dispatch the fish by using
a shillelagh to deliver a couple of
blows to the brain area. - Rinse all excess blood from the
exterior of the fish. - Place the fish in the killbag and
cover with as much ice as possible
to get the body temperature down
as soon as possible. - When returning from sea we head
and gut the fish before we slurry it
for a few hours to get the core tem-
perature to as close to zero degrees
as possible.
As I mentioned, this is not the way
the commercial fleet operate but it’s
what suits us best while still resulting in
some world class quality tuna.
If we had a much larger vessel and if
our fish were in the 60-100kg range
then we would certainly follow the pro-
cedure the Cape guys have adopted. It
goes without saying that it will take a
lot longer to drop the core temperature
of a 60-100kg tuna than say a 30kg
tuna, once iced up, just like a 340ml
beer will cool down much more quick-
ly than a larger 5L keg if they were put
in the same icebox. If you’re able to
quickly kill and cool the fish then
you’re well on the way to having world
class sashimi, poke, seared tuna or even
tuna meat balls!
In the July/August 2017 issue of SKI-
BOATwe’ll share details of how the
Australian commercials bleed and pre-
pare their tuna catches.36 • SKI-BOAT May/June 2017
The dorado pictured above was correctly gaffed. Below you can see what happens
to the dorado’s flesh if you gaff it in the middle of the fillet.
This top quality tuna was well gaffed, properly iced and carefully prepared.