On 20 March 2011 at 6:45am, we launched my Dad’s boat “Selfish” off Richards Bay. My sister, Julie, and brother in law, Carl, had come down for the long weekend, from Jo’burg, to do some fishing. There had been a few shoal cuda at “Petingo” so we decided to fish for them.
Our first stop was on the pipeline to look for some live bait. We sounded around the area and dropped sabiki rigs into each showing we found, but had no success. After about an hour, we decided to try another spot between the ships. We had the same result as the pipe and were now getting desperate for bait. Our last option was to stop at a reef in 42m of water a few kilometres north of “Petingo”. When we got there, we found a nice showing and sent the jigs down. Carl went tight with a string of bait that gave him the run around before he lifted 4 tiny bonnies into the boat! We scrambled to put the luna tube on, but as luck would have it, the pump did not work! We later found it was a loose connection. We had no option but to put them in the coolerbox to use as dead bait. We scratched around for more bait, but failed. At 9:30 we upped lines and headed for the wreck.
When we arrived, there were 3 other boats. They each had a fish or two so we felt positive. The water was crystal clean, 27 degrees and the current was screaming! The NW wind was blowing at about 8-10 knots. I am not a fan of these conditions when fishing for big cuda, but they are good for the shoal size fish. I rigged 2 wala-wala and 2 of the tiny bonnies and set them at different depths and distances from the boat. We resumed slow trolling into the current and about half way up the wreck we found a good showing halfway off the bottom. Almost immediately the bonnie on the 6oz sinker was eaten. Carl took the rod and pulled a 5kg cuda to the boat where it was gaffed. Fresh fish tonight! I had just rerigged the bait and was about to put it out when the reel with the deep wala-wala went away. Julie took the rod and fought a frisky fish to the boat. While this was going on, the surface wala-wala was eaten and the fish took a few meters of line before slowing down. Carl had by then gaffed Julie’s cuda so I passed the rod to her so that she could catch another fish. The small cuda came to the boat quickly and just as it was about to come into gaffing range, it threw the hook. Unlucky! Oh well, that’s fishing. We regrouped and set the lines with new baits. By now we were on the northern side of the wreck and started turning, the deep bonnie was eaten. I was standing next to the rod, so I took the strike. This was another small fish which came to the boat easily before Carl gaffed it.
3 from 4 on the first pass over the wreck ... not bad! What would the next pass bring? The wind had changed from NW to NE and picked up to about 12 knots. We made another approach from the south and tacked over the wreck, following our previous track. The sounder showed a lot of activity, but nothing happened. It was quite all the way up to the northern point. The other boats had also noticed that the fish had switched off. I can only guess that it was the wind direction change. We trolled the wreck for the next 3 hours without a strike before upping lines and returning to port. It was nice to be back home and washing the boat while the sun was still up!
