At 6am On Saturday the 21st May, Michael Duvenage, my Dad, Shane Denis and I launched Shane’s friend’s boat “Mocha” out of Grannies pool at Umhlanga. We were fishing in the Umhlanga Prestige Interclub, representing Richard Bay.
We were the second boat to launch out of 22 and once on backline, we waited for the other boats to make their way through the surf. In this time we rigged up bait rods to catch live bait. By 7:30am all the boats were behind backline and we all set off for the wreck to catch bait.
On arriving at the wreck, we dropped strings of sabiki rigs down to the bottom into thick showings of bait. They were immediately eaten by hungry shad, mackerel, maasbanker, razor bellies and pinkies. There was an unbelievable amount of bait and at one stage we were pulling up full strings of shad and mackerel. It was a live bait angler’s paradise! It took a whole 15 minutes to fill the bait tank and then we headed north to Umdloti.
Michael and I rigged 5 rods with livebait traces and started setting the lines. With 3 surface lines out, we rigged two baits to send deep, one maasbanker and one shad. Mike let his bait out a bit when he said something ate his bait. While he was feeding the fish, I put the shad in the water. Almost immediately, Shame and I saw a dark shape come into view and chase the shad. As the shad came to the surface to escape, the “shape” grew a bill and sail and grabbed the shad about 2 meters from the boat! I fed the fish and watched it fade away with the shad in its mouth. Michael and I both gave the fish line before Shane opened up the one motor. We both tightened up at the same time and line ran off the reels. We all stood looking back as the lines came to the surface as the sailfish cleared the water shaking its head. As the sail fall back to the water, the shad went flying and my line went slack as the hooks came out. Michael on the other hand was still attached to the fish which took off a
way from the boat. We cleared the lines and backed up after the fish. Michael retrieved most of the line before the fish went deep. We moved away from the fish and the line came to the surface. I chased after the fish as Michael put line back on the reel in a hurry before the fish sounded again. After sulking in the deep water for a bit, it came to the surface where we caught a glimpse of the fish as it flashed on the surface. The dirt green water made the silver flank look brown and we all for a moment thought it had converted to a shark. Luckily this thought was dispelled as the fish lifted its sail and we saw the electric blue colours. After 15 minutes the fish started tiring and neared the boat. It made several great jumps and then tailwalked towards the boat. It came so close that Shane took cover as the fish barely missed the transom. Michael was quick to take up the slack and managed to get the leader on the rod. I backed up after the fish and a few seconds later it was next to the boat where Shane (who was now out from hiding) grabbed the bill. We took a few photos and then cut the trace before releasing a healthy 25-30kg sailfish. Not bad for the first 5 minutes of the competition!
Unfortunately that was the only action that we had for the rest of the competition other that a small bonito and another one that was eaten by the sharks. We also had a dolphin eat one of our live baits which was very uncommon!
