New SA Record ... well, almost!

On Friday 20^th March, my sister (Julie) and brother in law (Carl Oellermann) flew down to Richards Bay for the long weekend to do some cuda fishing. The season had just started and already there were a few nice fish coming out. We were going to look for the ladies SA record king mackerel on 24kg line which is vacant at the moment. This means that the fish needs to be 24kg or bigger to qualify for a record.

On Saturday morning we launched my Dad’s boat “Selfish” and headed straight out the harbour mouth to a bait reef in 42m of water. We dropped sabiki rigs and managed a few maasbankers and mackerel. We then headed out to the 50m ledge to some pinnacles called small high point. I put out 5 rods with rapalas and daisy chains and trolled around the bumps for a while looking for small bonito to use as bait. We managed to catch 3 bonito on our first pass and another 2 on the next pass. These bonito were relatively big (+-2kg) and were borderline bit size. After about an hour, we upped lines and headed to the Petingo wreck.

At 10:30 we arrived at petingo, the water was a off green colour with a slight reverse current. There were two other boats there but they had not had a touch the whole morning. We decided to give it a go and I rigged up the rods. The tackle we were using were 4 Shimano TLD25’s with 24kg Berkley Trilene and attached 80Lbs fluorocarbon leaders to the main line. I rigged a live mackerel on the surface and a live maasbanker on a 16oz sinker. I also rigged a wala-wala on the surface and one of the 2kg bonito on a 12oz sinker. All the baits were rigged with 7/0 single hooks.

I slow trolled around the wreck for quite a while when I noticed a dark patch of water next to the wreck. When we got close to it, I could see that it was a shoal of torpedo scads and small yellowfin kingfish. This was the first sign of life that we had seen and so we decided to concentrate our efforts on this area.

At 13:15, as I was approaching the shoal of baitfish, the reel with the live maasbanker smoked off. I spun round to see which rod it was, only to see the second rod with the big bonito keel over and that reel also took off. Oh no, a tangle I thought! Carl grabbed the second rod while my sister took the first. Both lines ran in the same direction at a blistering speed. A few seconds later, the reel that Julie was holding stopped and the line hung limp. A burn off obviously. The other rod was still smoking and I spun the boat around and started chasing the fish. The other lines were cleared and the fight continued. After a run of close to 200m, the fish slowed and Carl could gain some line. The fish made a few circles under the boat and then came within reach of the gaff. My Dad stuck the fish and pulled it over the gunwale. It hit the deck with a thud. It was a good fish and only just fitted in the hatch.

After the chaos was sorted out, I set about rerigging and noticed that the line that Julie had had her fish on was not burnt off. The #7 wire had been bitten off in front of the bait. It had been a second fish and not a tangle after all. Probably a similar size to the fish we caught.

We had no further strikes and upped lines at about 14:30 and headed for home. When we weighed the fish, it pulled the scale down to 24,7kg. It would have been an SA record for ladies if my sister had taken the rod! Unlucky!!! Oh well, it’s not the first time and definitely not the last time...