On Saturday the 6th of March, Ettienne de Villiers, Jacques Spence, Wayne Ritchie and I arranged to go fishing off Richards Bay the next day on Ettienne’s 21ft Yeld Cat “Deep Burn”. The weather forecast looked excellent with 3-4 knot offshore winds turning to 9 knot Easterly in the afternoon. Our plan was to go and look for ‘cuda at the legendary hotspot “Petingo”. This would be our first attempt to fish for the big ‘cuda as the season was just starting.
At 5am on Sunday I fetched Wayne and went down to the Richards Bay Ski Boat Club. There was a hive of activity with a number of boats launching to take advantage of the great weather. Etts and Jacques arrived a short while later and we launched the boat and headed out the harbour mouth. We headed to the pipeline to look for some livebait and managed to get a few maasbankers. We then headed south toward another bait reef just to see if we could get a different baits. On the first drop, Wayne and I came up with full strings of mackerel! Great stuff! After getting enough bait, we headed for the wreck which is 18km south of the harbour.
When we arrived at “Petingo”, there were 2 other boats sitting on the wreck. The water was an off green colour and there was no current. We rigged up with 2 live mackerel (one on surface and another on a 10oz sinker), 2 wala-wala (one on top and one on a 6oz sinker) and a bonnie (on a 16oz sinker). We started slow trolling around the wreck but could not work it properly due to the other boats sitting directly on top of the wreck fishing with dropshot ... frustrating to say the least. One of the boats moved off the spot while casting to a shoal of torpedo scads on the surface and after catching one, they rigged it and returned to the wreck. As they stopped to dropshot, they got a good rev and managed to load a 24kg cuda! Just shows you the fish were n the area.
We continued trolling and at about 10am, the bonito was eaten. I took the rod and fought the fish for about 20 minutes before I handed the rod to Wayne (My back problems started to get the better of me). Wayne pulled the fish hard for a few minutes before we saw the big brown shape of a blackfin shark at the end of the line. We brought the shark to the boat and petted it a bit then cut the trace and released it. What an anticlimax!
We set the lines again and continued trolling. There was a lot of life around the wreck. Next to the buoy were shoals of garfish and a bit deeper were a few rainbow runner. On the wreck were big shoals of yellowfin kingfish just cruising on the surface. Around the edge of the kingfish shoal were big bonito and torpedo scads. These shoals would erupt on the surface chasing baitfish, turning the water into foam. This would be seen from a long way away as there were hundreds of birds working the surface. It was an awesome sight. With all this activity, there had to be more cuda around.
By 11am the other boats had left and we were alone on the wreck. We trolled over every inch of it looking for that one big fish. This might sound boring, but it definitely was not. Every time we trolled over the wreck, we would cast small spoons into the kingfish, scad, bonito, garfish and rainbow runner. We were having a ball. At 2pm the reel with the bonito on it took off. I passed the rod to Jacques who fought the fish for a few minutes. The fish made a few good runs at the boat and finally came within range of the gaff. I hauled the +-17kg cuda over the gunwale much to the delight of the crew. This was our first cuda of the season but hopefully not our last.
We rerigged and trolled around for a bit longer. At 3pm we had another rev on the bonito but it turned out to be another blackfin shark that jumped twice before it broke the 80Lbs fluorocarbon leader off. After that, we were all tired and called it a day. The next few trips will definitely be in search of the crocodiles of Petingo!
