On Friday 10th August 2012 at 6am, Carl and I launched “Selfish” off Richard Bay. We were keen to get on the water as the bad weather over the past few weekends had kept us shore-bound. We stopped at the pipeline and on our first down with sabikis, we filled up on maasbankers and shad. Within 10mins, we had more than enough livies and headed off north to look for a snoek.
I put out 2 redeyes and 2 fillets and trolled north between 14 and 25m. The water was 19 degrees and everyone was battling to get pulls. After about an hour the one redeye went away. Carl took the strike while I cleared the lines. The fish fought like a snoek for a few minutes but then things changed. The weight went heavy and the fish headed out to sea. Carl was fishing 8kg line and could not do much but hold on while I followed. After applying as much drag as we could, the fish tired and after an hour, Carl had a blackfin shark of about 60-70kg next to the boat. I managed to get my trace back before releasing it. We trolled until 10am then upped lines and headed for the 50m ledge.
I had 2 wala-wala pre-rigged and quickly put them out. I was busy rigging up a few other bait when Carl shouted “there it goes!” and the next thing, the TLD 20 next to my ear smoked off! Now thats how fishing should be ... 5 minutes in the water and on! I passed the rod to Carl and cleared the other line. He fought the fish to the boat where I gaffed a nice 11kg cuda. Great ... fresh fish for supper!
Without wasting too much time, I got the 4 deadbaits in the water. I was itching to get a livie in so I grabbed the closest rod (10kg line), attached a live bait trace and pinned a big maasbanker. I let it out about 30m on the surface and returned to the controls. We were on the shallow side of the ledge so I tacked deeper. As the depth sounder showed we were going off the deep end, we heard one of the reels slowly running. Both Carl and I swung around to see the rod with the livie bending double. As I picked up the rod, I could feel heavy head nods. There was a splash on the surface followed by more nods. Carl increased the speed of the boat and line began to smoke off the reel. Next thing a really nice size sailfish climbed out the water and started tailwalking. I passed the rod to Carl, as he had only caught one sailfish previously, and frantically cleared the other 4 rods and
down rigger... in record time ... Usain Bolt eat your heart out! Meanwhile, the sail was emptying the reel so we followed it to slow the run. It stayed on surface so I rode right to it where Carl managed to tip the leader (which was only 2 meters long). Carl and I thought it was going to be a quick fight but the fish had other ideas. It sounded about 10m and would not budge. In the next 45 minutes, I tried every manoeuvre in the book but could not get the fish up. The fact that there was no current or wind did not help either! I had one last trick up my sleeve and switched both motors off. Carl went up on the drag a tough and we let the fish do all the work.
It took about 30m under some heavy drag before the line angled to the surface. I started the engines and moved to intercept the fish. As I pulled in next to it, it stuck its head out the water and gave a few jumps before sounding to the 10m depth again... but we had the trick. After repeating the process a few times, the fish began tiring. After an hour and 25 minutes, the fish was close to the boat again. The leader to double knot was just under the surface so Carl stepped back and I reached under water and gingerly took the leader. With this slight increase in lifting power, the fish lifted its head and swam to the surface where I took hold of the bill. We put in a tag, removed the hooks, revived the fish and sent it on its way. Carl and I both estimated the fish at around 40kg.
We returned to the ledge and trolled for another hour and apart from 2 big sharks, it was quiet so we upped lines and returned to port.
