On Wednesday 1st May,
Marius Botha and I launched “Addicted” of Richards Bay. We wanted to take
advantage of the small weather window we had in the morning as the weekend
forecast looked terrible.
We left the harbour at 6:30 and headed
on the pipeline. As we stopped, there was a big showing of bait and when the
jigs hit the ground, I went on with a full string of maasies. A second drop
yielded the same result and just like that, in 10 minutes, we had bait. We then
trolled small feathers south along the 30m ledge hoping for some small bonnies,
but unfortunately they were not around.
On arriving at the 32m area, I
put out a spread of baits. The current was ripping north to south and the NE
wind of 15 knots meant Marius could not leave the controls for a second. Somehow,
the 5 lines went out, even though we were going backwards at 6km per hour!
After about an hour of slow
trolling, I noticed the surface rod with a livebait start bumping. I strolled
over to it and gave a few winds, expecting it to be one of the many small
hammer head sharks that plague us in that area. As the line came tight, the
water boiled and the reel smoked off. Definitely not a hammer! By the speed it
took off I assumed it was a cuda, but when I looked back, Isaw a nice dorado
greyhounding away from the boat. Now that was a surprise. After clearing the other
lines, I took the rod and had quite a tussle before Marius could get a gaff
into the fish.
We had moved far south so while
the lines were up, we ran 6km north to the point that we had started our troll.
The wind seemed to have dropped a bit and handling the boat was much easier. Again
the 5 lines went out and as I was checking the drag on the last reel I noticed
that the surface rod, with a mackerel on
it, was bumping and this time I was sure that it was a small hammer. I gave a
few quick turns on the reel to hopefully get the bait away, but the rod keeled
over and the reel took off. Both Marius and I could not believe what we saw as
another dorado jumped out the back. Marius took the rod and quickly had another
dorado in the ice box.
By the end of the troll, the wind
had picked up and was getting stronger. The sea was getting very bumpy and we
had a 25km run back home. We upped lined and made the long run back to port.
Unfortunately we did not get a cuda, but we were glad to have found 2 winter
dorado.
