Hiya
Specifically refering to tuna. Their flesh is very solid and even bad shots hold very well. I haven't lost a tuna due to a fish tearing off yet, and i'm VERY good at making BAD SHOTS!!!
If you fish with rod and reel, you'll understand my theory very well!! The more line a tuna takes from your reel, the more line you have to retrieve!! Similarly, when shooting tuna, a very long float line is detrimental to you. The fish simply weighs so much, that it'll easily take all your float line. Should you at any time let go of your floatline, the fish simply sinks down to the bottom, taking all your hard earned floatline with it again. Should the fish die deep down, you'll need to get into the boat to pull the fish up. Impossible to pull a big fish from great depth whilst you're in the water.
The Tommy Botha float system works VERY well. As Rob says, its definitely the way to go. Read on the other forums on how long spearo's take to land their tuna's. Most stories will tell you about epic 1-2hr fights and a knackered spearo afterwards. My wife boated a 50kg YF in under 15minutes with-out any problem with Tommy's float system. Goes to show you the effectiveness of it.
Shane, shooting and landing those Giant BF tuna is basically unchartered territory. No hard and fast rules on what works and what doesn't. Since the water is very deep, you could possibly try two boogie board floats with a slightly smaller one in the front and a larger than normal one at the rear. That way, you can tie off the bungees as you retreive them. Another limiting factor is the drag that lots of line has in the water. When we fished for tuna on rod and reel using 10kg line, a big tuna would easily take 200-300m line. The shear drag on 300m line is enough to break the line, even if your drag is on free spool. Similarly, having a very big fish, in very deep water, will put loads of pressure on your float line system. You'll have to play around with bungee lengths and boogie board sizes to find the right combination so that the slip tip cable or shooting line doesn't snap under the weight plus drag.
Regards
miles
Specifically refering to tuna. Their flesh is very solid and even bad shots hold very well. I haven't lost a tuna due to a fish tearing off yet, and i'm VERY good at making BAD SHOTS!!!
If you fish with rod and reel, you'll understand my theory very well!! The more line a tuna takes from your reel, the more line you have to retrieve!! Similarly, when shooting tuna, a very long float line is detrimental to you. The fish simply weighs so much, that it'll easily take all your float line. Should you at any time let go of your floatline, the fish simply sinks down to the bottom, taking all your hard earned floatline with it again. Should the fish die deep down, you'll need to get into the boat to pull the fish up. Impossible to pull a big fish from great depth whilst you're in the water.
The Tommy Botha float system works VERY well. As Rob says, its definitely the way to go. Read on the other forums on how long spearo's take to land their tuna's. Most stories will tell you about epic 1-2hr fights and a knackered spearo afterwards. My wife boated a 50kg YF in under 15minutes with-out any problem with Tommy's float system. Goes to show you the effectiveness of it.
Shane, shooting and landing those Giant BF tuna is basically unchartered territory. No hard and fast rules on what works and what doesn't. Since the water is very deep, you could possibly try two boogie board floats with a slightly smaller one in the front and a larger than normal one at the rear. That way, you can tie off the bungees as you retreive them. Another limiting factor is the drag that lots of line has in the water. When we fished for tuna on rod and reel using 10kg line, a big tuna would easily take 200-300m line. The shear drag on 300m line is enough to break the line, even if your drag is on free spool. Similarly, having a very big fish, in very deep water, will put loads of pressure on your float line system. You'll have to play around with bungee lengths and boogie board sizes to find the right combination so that the slip tip cable or shooting line doesn't snap under the weight plus drag.
Regards
miles