Black Magic

On 26^th December 2011, Phillip, Corrie and Llewellyn (from Sea Queen fame) and I boarded Lappies Labuschagne’s “Black Magic” and put to sea off Sodwana. The water was an off blue and there was little current. The wind was a light NE.

We put out a spread of lures and Lappies trolled south towards Diep Gat. The morning was uneventful in fishing terms, but with Oom Llewellyn’s quirky sense of humour and classic jokes, we enjoyed every minute of the day. After several hours we only had a few half hearted chases from dorado. Several boats had reported hook-ups in the 600-700m depth and so we focussed our attention on this depth.

At about 1pm, the left long rigger came down and a very small fish thrashed on the surface. We could not decide what the fish was but treated it as s billfish. Corrie took the strike and very quickly had the fish near the boat. The identification varied from spearfish to stripey to baby blue marlin. Only when Phillip took the trace, did we positively id the fish as a very small blue marlin. Because it was still full of energy, it gave us a good run around at the boat and after several spectacular jumps, the fish was tagged and released ... all captured on my GoPro camera.

That was the last of the action we had for the day and headed back to the beach. Thanks to Lappies and crew for a great day.