# tuna trip to a remote island off Okinawa



## ksong (Jun 30, 2004)

Daito Island is located about 350km east of Okinawa. It is only one hour flight from Okinawa, but it takes two days to get there from the US because of connection flights.

There are two Island. One is North Daito and the other is South Daito. We went to North Daito where no one can speak English. If anyone in your group can not speak Japanese, I advise not to go there. 

North Daito is a little bigger and I heard some can speak English there.

Even though Tsurusaki san of FCL LABO said tuna fishing is great there, I didn't expect too much. But it is a kind of exploratory trip for fishermen in Korea as it takes only two hour flight from Korea to Okinawa and many fishermen in Korea are dreaming about catching tuna.

We planned to fish 4 days, but we could fish on the boat only one day and spent two days for fishing from the shore due to Typhoon Noul.

There is no harbor in the island and they use crane to lift a boat for launching a boat.
I heard there are only 5 commercial rod and reels boats in total.

Fishing was much more than I expected. The boat is a kind of traditional Japanese boat similar to panga in Mexico. The tuna ground is only 2 - 3 miles from the shore. 
Tsurusaki San said they usually catch yellowfin, bigeye and dogtooth tuna there, but we couldn't find any bigeye or togtooth tuna, but there were lots of small yft. They say they usually catch yft in 50 - 100 lb range, but we encountered smaller yft on jigs and poppers on our trip.

Tsurasaki san said Tuna prefer Japanese style jigging with long jigs here and he proved he is right by 
landing three yft on a long jig by cranking fast on first three drift. 
I wanted to test BH Cape Cod Special Slow Pitch rods for tuna and used a 200g short Super Sardine jig for comparison. I had 4 hit on the jig, but landed only one as it was hard to set the hook with such a light 
rod. Whenever we cast, small yft attacked lures aggressively. 
Won had four yft on jigs by cranking fast before tuna stop biting.

Even though we fished tuna only a few hours, I can see what this Island can offer. 
There are not many places where you can catch tuna within a few miles from the shore. 
They say big bigeye are usually mixed in.

We knew we couldn't fish next two days due to the approaching Typhoon.



Okinawa airport


North Daito




Just happy to see my rod case arrived.


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## ksong (Jun 30, 2004)

commercial boats


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## ksong (Jun 30, 2004)

BH Cape Cod Special Slow Pitch Jigging rod in action








BH Cape Cod Special 150g jigging rod in action


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## ksong (Jun 30, 2004)

with BH Cape Cod Special 80g jigging rod


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## ksong (Jun 30, 2004)

I saw fishermen on the dock. They catch bait like mackerel first and use it for bait using heavy rod. I asked them what they catch and they said big GT !
When I went a restaurant, there are many big GT pictures which anglers caught from the shore like in Hawaii.

We tried to fish from the shore for two days, but it was pretty rough because of the Typhoon. We managed a few bluefin trevally, but we couldn't land a GT. But we know big GT are there. If I come back to this Island again, I will try GT from the 
shore.

Even the Island is small and only 660 people live there, the road system around the Island great. Japanese Government invested lots of money for this Island.


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## Toledo (Mar 6, 2006)

Very cool! Thanks for sharing Kil.


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## JFolm (Apr 22, 2012)

Cool pictures. That rod action looks awesome. What reel did you pair it with? Hard to tell from the picture.


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## Where'dMyBaitGo (Feb 15, 2015)

What an awesome trip! Great pics, looks like you made some great memories


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## fullon_harvest (Aug 26, 2005)

Wow! That is very interesting. 

I especially like how they did the ink blotter of the big GT. 

Those are some toads in the old photos. 

Thanks for sharing. 

Also, I recently ran across a 2011 posting of yours re tuna jigging on the jignpop forum. Very informative and thanks again.

Tight lines.


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## hector200 (Jul 7, 2004)

wow awesome report, nice tuna, surf fishing for GT wow


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