ABF - Absolute Bloody Final ... First Launch

On Saturday 8^th December, Ray and I launched “ABF” for the first time. My Dad had booked the boat in for the 20hrs service and the motors only had 8 hours on them, so our job was to fill in the extra 12 hours. That meant an early morning and lots of trolling.

By 6am we were on the pipeline catching bait. This was for just in case there were a few dorado around. After getting a few maasies, we headed off to the ledge. The water was not great, so we headed deeper and found a beautiful colour line at 100m. I put out 4 rapalas and a small surface lure and headed north along the line. The water temp was over 25 degrees and the current was ripping! Several boats were already on the line ahead of us, and they had seen a few dorado so we were feeling positive that we would catch the first food fish on the boat. After about an hour, one of the deep diving rapalas went away. Ray took the strike and brought a nice bull dorado to the boat where I gaffed our first fish, hopefully of many. With the pressure off, we continued trolling north. The further we went, the closer the colour line moved in and as luck would have it, the water was clean on the northern point of the ledge. As I crossed over the reef, the deep diver went off again, but unfortunately, the hooks did not stick. On closer inspection, you could see the deep teeth marks of what I suspect was a wahoo. Oh well, that happens. I made a few turns without another pull so continued north. A short while later, another rod went away with a dorado. Again Ray pulled the fish in where it ended up in the hatch with the first.
The clean water moved right in over the next few hours, but apart from another on-off strike, it was quiet so we returned to port at around 3pm.