On Saturday 12th May, At van Tilburg, Konstant Viljoen (Snr and Jnr) and I launched “AVANTI” off Cape Vidal. We were looking to pass the time before attending a good friend of ours wedding that afternoon. With no real game plan, we stopped off the point and At sounded around for bait showings. While we felt the area, we noticed a few small bonnies popping up every so often. I put out a small minieye and let it out about 20m ... just in case. At found a few showings and both Konstant and I went down with sabiki jigs and caught a few maasbankers.
With a good supply of livies, At suggested we go north to the greens where a few cuda came out the day before. As I was retrieving the minieye, a small bonnie grabbed it. It was unceremoniously dumped in the lunatube. We decided we would make another turn to see if we could get another one. I put out 2 minieyes, a daisy chain and 2 big rapalas. At trolled in a big circle and after about 5 minutes, we went on with 3 rods. Suddenly the game plan was to catch bonnies for bait to take back to Richards Bay! This went on for a while then the bonnies went off the bite. Slowly we trolled towards Oscar pinnacle. We found a few more bonnies and 3 yellowfins. These kept little Konstant busy on the coffee grinder and 16lbs braid! The next pass saw 2 rods on with yellowfins. As the fish got to the boat, there was a big splash in front of the boat... it was a big dolphin... It came flying in and snatched the yellowfin. Konstant senior took over the rod and tried to get the yellowfin out the dolphins mouth. After about 10 minutes of tug o war, we got just the head back. The lines went out again but the dolphin followed in the distance. As luck would have it, another yellowfin grabbed the japan lure and ran off. The dolphin accelerated towards the tuna and the tug o war started again. This time, we were not keen to sit tied to a mammal for a long time, so we parted the line off.
We decided that the point was the better bet and ran back to where we had started the morning. There were no cuda traces so while I made up a few, we trolled the feathers around and yip, you guessed it ... more bonnies. By not I had the traces made and put out 2 live maasbankers and 2 live bonnies. At trolled south towards the lighthouse but things were quiet. After about an hour, the deep bonnie died so I rigged it as a dead bait and put it down. At about 11:30, At said we should pull up lines as we did not want to be late for the wedding. I was busy retrieving the surface livie when I noticed the tip of the rod with the dead bonnie bump a few times. I gave two turns on the reel and the rod keeled over and the reel took off! Konstant took the rod while we cleared the other lines. The fish came in quickly and showed itself to be a shoal cuda of about 6 or 7kg. After I gaffed the fish, we headed back to the beach. All in all, it was a great relaxed morning.
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