How to Land Monster Bluefin - Advice from Catamaran Sailor Eric Laakmann

Eric Laakmann is a young circumnavigating sailor with a reputation for landing fish from his 55 foot catamaran 'Zephyr'. After buying three Thunderstruck lures for a fishing trip in New Zealand, Eric made contact to share his journey to boating 270kg of tuna! 

On our mid-winter quest around East Cape (New Zealand’s north island) to pack the Zephyr freezers full of fresh seafood we had three goals:

1. Catch a bluefin tuna;
2. Catch enough tuna to fill the freezers; and
3. Catch a 100kg bluefin tuna.

I wasn’t quite sure we would even be able to make #1 happen...

...but we crushed all three goals! And we crushed them so hard that we came back into port with the freezers packed and a 100kg fat tuna sitting on the transom ready for ice.

Before leaving I didn’t want to leave any advantage behind, and after watching a video of the action of Zacatak’s Thunderstruck lure I picked up three, which arrived only days before departure. That proved to be a very wise choice as in two days of fishing, five out of seven strikes came from the Thunderstruck lure and four out of the five fish we landed were on the Thunderstruck - I’m in love!

Being a catamaran sailboat without outriggers, we only run two lures. At first we ran the Thunderstruck way out with a daisy chain in front of it hoping to cover more water. That did not prove to be productive as I believe the daisy chain interfered with the action of the Thunderstruck. So on day two we pulled it in closer, just on the backend of the turbulent water, and 10 metres behind our daisy chain that we were towing up the centre. The Thunderstruck produced every single fish we caught from that point forward… including the 100kg monster bluefin!

In two days of fishing we managed to catch a whopping 270kg of tuna! Three Bluefin tuna (100kg, 70kg and 60kg) and two Albacore tuna (around 20kg each). Wholesale, the tuna that we caught would be worth approximately $7,000 NZD.

Before we left I joked with Amanda, Marty, Aaron and Dixie that they'd be exhausted from success by the end of this trip. After filleting, processing and vacuum bagging 270kg of tuna, I think they'd agree that I was definitely not wrong!

You can check out the Thunderstruck range here, available in over 80 colour combinations!