2009 Bonanza

The first day of the 2009 Richards Bay Easter Bonanza dawned and nearly 100 boats took to the water. Wessel and Marinda as well as David Allen were with me for the competition and we were going to look for cuda. David and I launched “SELFISH” at about 4:30am and went to fetch Marinda and Wessel. By 5am we were waiting for the call to start fishing. In this time, I rigged up 5 baits so that I could put out as I stopped. When it was lines in, we sped off to petingo to get a shot at a fish before the rest of the fleet.

We stopped at petingo and I put out the baits, some deep, some on surface. In the distance you could see the boats approaching at speed. The water looked good and on my first pass over the wreck, the deep bait was taken by a nice fish which smoked off. Wessel took the strike and had a good fight with a nice cuda. About 15 minutes later, I gaffed a fish of 22kg. Nice start. Within half an hour, there were 25 boats on the wreck so I moved off to deeper water. At 11am, I made my way back to the wreck. Some of the boats had left and now there was some space to operate. I made 2 turns and a surface bait went off. Marinda fought the fish to the boat. It made another run and then stopped dead in its tracks. Marinda pulled in the head of an average size cuda which the shark had eaten near the boat. Unlucky. Later that day, we had another fish take the surface bait. David took the strike and brought in a cuda of about 8kg. That was the last of the action we had, but it was more that most of the other boats.

The second day of the Bonanza dawned and we set off at about the same time as the day before. The sea was flat so we had a great ride to petingo. There were fewer boats and we could manoeuvre easily. Things were very quiet and at about 11am, Wessel brought out the lunch pack. The first thing I saw was a pack of green apples! That is the worst thing you could have done. I am very superstitious about apples and from there, I was totally negative. Needless to say, the apples went for a swim.

At about 12 o clock, one of the surface walas was eaten and the reel smoked off. I took the strike and pampered the fish to the boat. I didn’t want to take any chances with the curse of the apples onboard. Luckily we had some good luck and David gaffed a fish of 21kg for me. Great! I put the lines out and as I turned there was a big splash behind the boat, followed by a smoking reel! Wessel took the rod and fought another nice 22kg cuda to the boat where I gaffed it.

Everything went dead from then on and we returned to harbour with 2 good fish. Unfortunately they were not big enough to win any prizes, but they tasted awesome.
The last day was blown out and that ended the 2009 Bonanza.