After returning from Kenya, I was keen to get on the water and try some of the new tricks I learnt. Close friend At van Tilburg was at Cape Vidal and he invited me to fish for the weekend. Divan Coetzee and I left Richards Bay at 03:45 on Saturday 4th December and arrived at Vidal round 5:30. The SW wind was still blowing but the forecast indicated that conditions would improve as the day progressed. We decided to fish for halfbeaks on the low tide and launch at midday for an afternoon session.
At, Pierre, Divs and I fished for about two hours and managed to get 27 halfbeaks. After vacuum packing them, we hitched the boat, launched and set off for the live bait spot. The bait was relatively scarce but after 45mins we managed to get about 20 baits. The sea was choppy with a 15knot SW blowing. We wanted to fish south of the launch so we opted to pull lures instead of pounding our way into the wind. About 10mins later, we had a strike and Divan caught our first Vidal Dorado for December. After arriving at the lighthouse, we rigged a few livies and slow trolled north with the wind, tacking deeper and shallower as we went. In 27m Pierre caught a nice Dorado on the surface. A short while later, we had a double strike and Divs and I fought the fish. Mine came to the boat first and turned out to be a hammerhead shark of about 20kg ... not what I was hoping for! Divan brought in a Dorado of around 6kg.
The current had pushed us south while we were fighting the fish and we upped lines and moved further north before resetting the lines. Things were a bit quiet for a while until we moved into the area where the water temp increased. Almost immediately, the deeper bait was eaten and the fish smoked off. I took the strike and while Divs was clearing some lines I saw a Dorado swimming behind us. Divs fed it a livie and it was game on. Another double. I managed to get a cuda of +- 8kg while Divs got another Dorado. We were busy resetting the lines when the far surface bait was eaten. I picked up the rod and took up the slack. After a short run, I felt something break. On closer inspection, I saw that the 100Lbs fluorocarbon leader had been bitten through. It was probably another fish that ate the lure which had slid up the line. About 10mins later, Divan did his magic with a sailfish. Nice Divs!!!
At 15:30 we beached and after prepping for the next day, we enjoyed a fresh fish and chips meal. NICE!
