YouTube - The Ironman of the Tuna fishing

 

Steve, that's incredible, isn't it? I can remember watching footage like that when I was a kid. Maybe even the same one. I couldn't hear all the dialogue here at work, but I wonder how they dislodge the hooks so fast. I assume barbless hooks, but even so it seems like it would take longer than that for a fish to spit the hook on their own.

It looks a lot more like work, than sport.

Also, if I am within 100 yards of another angler, I can be sure we will get tangled up sooner or later. Forget standing shoulder to shoulder like those guys.

 

Bill,

I don't believe that WAS "sport fishing".

Kinda' looked like sixty-year-old commercial tuna fishing to me.

Pop

 

As one who has spent (wasted) many dollars in search of tuna, that is amazing stuff.

 

SpringerPop has it right. That is commercial fishing. I used to live in San Diego as a teenager in a portugese community. They were all tuna fishermen and they all had what we called "popeye gams". Lots of arm stregnth. That is what you called a "pole boat". In the early seventies they all went to a purse seiner boat where they would cast out a large net then close a drawstring at the bottom and haul the net aboard. Much more efficient.

My brother worked the tuna boats as a chief engineer for 40 years.