On Saturday 3rd August 2011, Ray and I launched “Selfish” for a day’s Garrick fishing. There had been quite a few coming out and we wanted to get into some of the action. The weather forecast did not look too great for the morning, but the prediction was for a beautiful afternoon. We were on the water at 7:30am and went straight to one of the buoys in the harbour to look for bait. As we stopped, it started to rain ... NOT AYOBA! We battled for about an hour before we decided to go to the pipeline and look there for some.
After a bumpy and wet ride, we arrived and send down sabikis.
Before Ray and I hit the bottom, we were on. We both lifted full strings of maasbankers into the boat. Maasbankers are not my favourite bait, but beggars can’t be choosers. Drift after drift we caught maasbankers. Every now and again, there was a shad in the mix. It was a bit of a mission but at least there were a few shad around. I moved a bit and found some nice pinky’s, but it was shad I was after so I returned to the maasbankers to persevere. On the second drift, there was a strange showing about 5-10m from the surface. Ray and I lifted the jigs into that depth and both went on instantly. We lifted 2 strings of beautiful size shad into the boat! We went down again and the same story ... patience finally paid off! Within 15 minutes, we had enough shad for the day and headed back to the south pier. 
I rigged 4 baits, 3 on surface and 1 deep and slowly trolled near the pier. The water was an off green and the changing tide was making it worse... at least the rain had stopped. We had trolled for a few minutes when the far bait was taken. I fed the fish but nothing happened. After a while, the line picked up and ran off the reel. I gave it time and then set the hook. It turned out to be a small Garrick of just over 6kg. The lines went back in and I worked the same area. About half an hour later, the same rod had a pull. I fed the fish and hooked up. It took very little line and came to the boat quickly. I traced the fish and lifted it into the boat by the tail. If it was not a competition, I would have released it. At least we were on the board. The rest of the day produced no further strikes and at 4pm we upped lines and went home.
