On Sunday 4th August,
Jacques Spence and I launched “ABF” off Richards Bay to look for snoek. The
weather forecast looked unreal with a maximum of 7kt. We left the harbour at
5:30 and had lines in the water by 6am. I was concerned that the fish would not
eat in such calm conditions during the day and hence the reason for launching
so early. I hoped to snatch a few before it was light. Despite having 5
beautiful baits in the water, we never had a pull.
By 8am, not one of the twenty odd
boats had a strike so I upped lines and headed for the pipeline. I rigged up a
set of sabiki jigs and when we found the showing, Jacques dropped the jig to
the bottom. He immediately went on with a string of maasies. We made another
drift and Jacques went on with a few mackerel. This sparked my interest so I
rigged up a second bait rod and sent the jigs down. I also went on with a
string of mackerel. All fishing plans went out the window at that point and
operation bait collection commenced. Drift after drift we went on with a mix of
mackerel, maasbankers, redeyes and razorbellies. We sat on the shoal for an
hour or so and managed to fill the livewell and headed for home.
After vacuum packing the baits
the final tally came to 88 mackerel and 30 redeyes. Bring on the gamefish!
