Quick Morning Session

On Saturday 12^th 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.

Petingo Cuda

At 6am on Sunday 6^th May, my Dad, Divan, David and I launched “Selfish” off Richards Bay. After a quick stop at the pipe, we had a few livies and headed out to the ships. On arrival, we found large showings of bait and were rewarded with several strings of nice mackerel and redeyes. After filling the bait well, it was off to small highpoint. The SE wind made the trip a bit uncomfortable as our heading was straight into the teeth but eventually we arrived. There were no other boats so I slowly idled onto the pinnacle and found a big showing. At the same time, small yellowfins and big kawa-kawa started jumping around the boat. Divan freelined a livebait while my Dad threw a spoon into the shoal. Both were rewarded with fish on in short succession. Unfortunately both fish parted ways with us. While this was going on, David rigged up his fly rod and made a few casts. I wanted to have some fun and tied on a small spoon and removed the hook. On the first throw, I had several small tuna clearing the water behind the lure trying to grab it. This went on for a while with a few fish holding so tight that they started taking line ... what a sight! The boat had drifted off the pinnacle, so I slowly headed back. As we stopped on top of the pinnacle, David managed to get a frigate tuna which went into the bait box.

 This was followed by a kawa-kawa of about 3kg which gave him a bit of a workout. After about half an hour, the surface action slowed so we put on a few rapalas and pulled through the showing above pinnacle. As we passed through the showing, all the reels took off. This time they were yellowfins and 2 were bled and put on ice while the others were released. We could have caught tuna all morning, but dragged ourselves away to target a big cuda, so off to Petingo wreck we went.

The conditions were perfect again. Beautiful water, good temperature and little traffic, but with all this, we battled to get a strike. Finally after about 3 hours, there was a big splash behind the boat and the surface rod smoked off. Divan took the rod as the rest of us cleared the deck. I followed the fish off the wreck to what we hoped was shark free zone. After a few anxious minutes, Divs presented the fish and my Dad gaffed a 20kg cuda... Great stuff! The lines went out again but other than a half hearted strike on a livebait, the day ended without another fish.