Cavy Fishing has released a feature-length account of one of the more ambitious shore-based tuna trips on Australian fishing YouTube this year - a split-second recon to a remote Northern Territory sand island with his fishing partner Sam, neither of whom had ever fished it before.
The pitch is laid out in the video's own framing. The trip exists, in his words, because the pair had a small weather window and an idea they had been chewing on for too long.
"We pulled the pin and made a split-second decision to chase a dream: catching a Giant Tuna from the shore," Cavy explains in the description. "Between wild weather gaps and a brutal recon mission to a remote sand island neither of us had ever fished, we knew this was going to be an all-or-nothing trip."
The gear is purpose-built for the work. The pair pack three reels each - 5,000s through 8,000s - sunglasses and straps for sight casting, gloves for handling toothy fish, and the lure that effectively defines the trip.
"In this box, the magic box, we have Current Killer range with the new dropped Phantom. This thing's sick," Cavy says. "And these little guys, they're going to be tuna slayers. So this thing is 40 g and it's so small. 40 g fast-sinking stick bait. We're going to be launching them off the beach."
The rod is spooled with PE 3 - around 40-pound braid - and 300 metres of line, which Cavy frames as the absolute minimum for fish that can run hard off the beach.
"It's PE 3, but yeah, like 40-something pound, I think. It's 300 m," he says, checking the line on a casting rig. "It'd get you out of trouble if longies off the rocks."
"We're just going to try and boat camp it. It's chill," Cavy narrates as the wind picks up. "All right, we might be beach camping it. I'll jump in. See how we go from the shore."
The fish, however, arrive almost immediately when the rods are finally rigged. Long-tail tuna and mackerel push tight against the beach as soon as the early morning bite comes on.
"Yep, yep, yep, tuna, tuna, tuna," Cavy says, watching fish blow up in the wash. "We just got here and we saw long-tail tuna already. They're on the shore."
The first cast produces a fish - a mackerel that initially looks, from the boil, like a long-tail.
"Captain Burleigh got us onto - we thought a longtail, but ended up being mackerel, which fight equally as hard pretty much," he says.
The pattern from there is the one shore-based pelagic anglers know well. Birds working the surface tell them where the bait is, where the predators are, and where to cast.
"Birds are the best fishermen," Cavy says. "So basically, they're our cues. We see birds moving over something. So much better."
The trip's defining moment arrives later in the session, when both Cavy and Sam land what he calls monster tuna from the sand - the catch the entire recon was built around.
"We actually did it. Both of us landed monster Tuna right off the beach. From the sand," he writes in the video's description. "A true bucket-list moment turned into reality."
The outro is unsentimental about what the trip cost in comfort.
"That was a successful trip. We pulled off the recon," Cavy says. "That was sick. Brothers in arms. Let's go."
