Skipjack tuna

SOUTH AFRICA REGULATES SEA FISHING SPECIES BY SPECIES, WHICH IS NOT HOW MOST COUNTRIES DO IT.

A recreational permit is the entry ticket and not the whole of it. On top of it sits a minimum size and a daily bag limit SET PER FISH, a closed season on a small number of species, and a cumulative daily cap across everything caught — so being inside the limit for each species separately does not put you inside the limit overall.

THERE IS A CAP ON HOOKS on a rod-and-line permit. A spearfishing permit is separate, allows no breathing apparatus beyond a snorkel, and PROHIBITS SPEARFISHING IN AN ESTUARY — a flat ban rather than a limit, and the rule visitors most often do not know.

A LANDED FISH MUST KEEP ITS HEAD AND TAIL so its length can be checked. Nothing caught on a recreational permit may be sold by anyone. And a small list of species may not be caught, landed or possessed at all.

FISHINGHQ DOES NOT PRINT THE FIGURES, and the reason is on this page rather than in a policy document: the department's own guidance says adjustments may be forthcoming given the acknowledged crisis of linefish, the numbers differ by species and by area and by whether you were standing on a beach or sitting in a boat, and a stale figure on a fishing site is worse than no figure at all. Get the current position from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and get the protected-area position from whichever body manages the stretch of coast you are on.

Fast-growing, early-maturing and short-lived — aged to about twelve years, and spawning within its first two. That life history is why skipjack sustains the largest tuna fishery in the world where slower tunas do not, and why it is assessed as Least Concern while several of its relatives are not.

Spawns opportunistically throughout the year in warm water across its range, releasing very large numbers of pelagic eggs. There is no single spawning season and no aggregation to protect, which is another part of why the species holds up under fishing pressure that would flatten a reef fish.

A pursuit predator on small shoaling fish, squid and crustaceans, hunting in fast-moving shoals that drive prey to the surface. The feeding boil — birds working, bait scattering, fish breaking — is the visible signature and the whole basis of the fishing method. Skipjack commit hard and fast to a moving lure and rarely inspect it.

Sight above all, at speed, in clear blue water. Tuna have exceptional visual acuity and colour vision and hunt visually in the upper water column, which is why lure colour and speed both matter and why a spread is run fast.

A highly migratory oceanic species that follows warm water and food. Off South Africa the offshore tuna fishing is broadly a warmer-months affair, with the fish moving in with warm water and thinning as it cools, though skipjack are the most widely available of the tunas through the year.

A routine and welcome South African offshore capture, the fish that most offshore lure fishing is learned on, and one of the standard live and dead baits for marlin and larger tuna. It falls under the general tuna listing at a daily bag limit with no minimum size. Its wider significance is that it is the fish most tins of tuna contain and the fish most people mean when they say bonito.

A fast, hot-blooded fish that dies quickly and spoils quickly.

IF IT IS BEING KEPT, BLEED AND ICE IT AT ONCE. Tuna flesh is ruined by being left warm; a skipjack bled and iced within minutes is a good fish and one left on a deck for an hour is not.

IF IT IS GOING BACK, GET IT BACK FAST. Tunas are obligate ram ventilators — they must swim to breathe — and a fish held out of the water is suffocating from the moment it leaves it.

MIND THE FINLETS AND THE TAIL. Nothing about a skipjack is venomous but a thrashing tuna on a deck is hard and fast, and trebles on a lure in that situation are the real hazard.