Bamboo Fishing Commercially continues today.

[SportFishStaff]

Never Realized that this practice still existed.

[Patudo]

It's very much still in use today and not just for skipjack. Here's one of the best videos I've found of the technique showing the capture of a nice allison. The crew is South African, but I wonder whether Portuguese/Madeiran fishermen brought the technique over as the Azores and Madeira bait boat fleets fish in a similar sort of way.

[Heli Sports]

This method of capture is still used throughout the world. Virtually every nation with significant tuna landings has a fleet of "bait boats"

The Spaniards fishing for large sized Bigeye Tuna around the Canary Islands have developed an interesting modification of this method. They intentionally harvest only a portion of the school, and then the vessel remains near the school after fishing. By doing this, the vessel behaves just like an FAD. The tuna school associated with the vessel is then realimented every day by fish from other surrounding schools and can be fished again. When the vessel's wells are filled, a second vessel comes and takes the place of the former. Some fishermen can then spend their entire fishing season working the same school.

I handled some excellent quality Bigeye landed with this technique in Grand Canaria some years ago. I remember one spectacular catch by a vessel that had a perforated salt water washdown hose fastened to its transom. They left with their live wells filled with bait and returned with 36 pieces of Bigeye between 175 and 300 lbs that they had caught in only 90 minutes of fishing. A few of these Bigeyes were still alive when they were discharged in Puerto de Mogan.

[tetepare]

This is one of the boats in the Solomon Islands working for the Soltai cannery in Noro , Solomon Islands. These guys make the best canned tuna in the world.

Soltai chili tayio is what its called. The cannery was tapped into an underground spring providing beautiful clean water and every can had a super hot chili in it. It was really good tuna.

However these boats it seems are no more.

Since the new management from Trimarine have taken over the running of Soltai, the taste and quality of the Soltai canned tuna have gone from best to one of the worst in SI or the world for that matter.
The Soltai canned tuna products now taste so horrible in comparision with some of the imported ones.
One of the reasons is that the fish used in canned tuna have now been sourced directly from lower quality and salty fish from NFD net boats, instead of highest quality fish from Soltai pole & line boats.
Other surreptitious reasons for the lower quality and taste in canned tuna are only known to the Soltai GM, management, and the cannery employees and it is up to them to inform us, the tuna consuming public.
What happened to the Soltai Pole & line boats?
The pole and line boats were discarded by the new management as it considered them uneconomical and all employees had been made redundant.
Sadly, out of all this, the new management and the board were shortsighted in making that vital decision.
They never predicted that the pole & line caught fish would attract premium prices within the very near future because of its highest quality and the environmentally friendly nature of pole & line fishing operation.
They never also took into account that pole & line fishing was suitable for Solomon Islands as it was easy, fishing boats could be operated by only locals, and the operations could be managed by local Solomon Islanders as long as they could manage it profitably.
Purse seine operation on the other hand is costly to set up, need some expatriate crews in the boats, and are usually owned and operated by international fishing companies.
Recently the world has gone greener at a rapid rate due to the climate change phenomena and pole & line fishing would be no doubt the mode of fishing for tuna in the near future.
As such the demand for pole and line caught fish is slowly picking up, and recently canneries in Europe and USA are willing to pay the highest prices for pole & line caught fish.
It may be inevitable that purse seine fishing would be, in the near future, be considered as the fishing mode of the past.
We do not know how much lower the new management would put Soltai through with the latest revelation that the cannery has been using this unhygienic water source for production of canned tuna.
Even the then Solomon Taiyo Ltd (STL), and the local management who managed Soltai during the first seven years of operations since inception, had never thought of using this particular water source for canned tuna production even though they knew it was the cheapest option.
This was because the water source and the surrounding area was full of human wastes and was used as rubbish disposal area for a long period of time.
The new management should appreciate the fact that STL and local management of Soltai in the early years had put a lot of effort, sweat, and pride in building up Soltai canned tuna products over many years in the local, regional and overseas markets in terms of quality, brand names, and the best tuna taste.
It would be pure stupidity and therefore regrettable, if all this goes down the drain because of this unscrupulous and covert practice in supplying water for canned production using unhygienic source.
The Soltai management should not compromise the qualify of canned tuna and the health of the tuna eating people of this nation and the world for the sake of maximizing profit as this is a recipe for a total disaster.

[Jer]

It continues in Brazil as well