No Winter sails...

On Saturday 21^st June, Tjokkie and I launched “ABF” at Cape Vidal. We were hoping to get Tjoks his first sailfish. The bay was exceptionally sanded and this made for an interesting launch to say the least. Safely behind backline Tjoks caught a few maasbanker while I rigged up a few sailfish baits.

When we were ready to rumble, the 4 baits went out as well as a teaser. I worked the area from the point to the lighthouse tacking between 20m and 45m. A bit deeper out, the birds were working big shoals of bait and there were 15-20kg yellowfin crashing everywhere.  I had to keep reminding myself that we were not here to catch gamefish but rather sailfish and so I kept working the shallows. Another reason for staying away was that there were a lot of gannets and albatross around and they were guaranteed to divebomb our baits and waste valuable trolling time.

 

It was relatively quiet for some time, with only a half-hearted strike from a small tuna, so I headed a bit north. Just off the slides, the left short bait was eaten and after feeding it a bit, I tightened up and passed the rod to Tjoks. The line came to the surface and there was a splash out the back as a nice dorado jumped around. It has choked down one of the biggest baits and was battling to breathe. I gaffed the fish and quickly got it in the hatch where it went mental! Well at least we were not mombakkies.

 

We trolled around for a few more hours with 2 more strikes by gamefish but left us a cleanly chopped off head. It was getting late so I suggested we go and get a tuna for sashimi that night so we quickly ran to Oscar pinnacle and free lined 2 live maasbankers on flouro leaders. I was busy letting out the bait when it was eaten by a small yellowfin. The fish gave me a bit of a run around but finally Tjoks got hold of the tail. After bleeding it and putting it on ice, we made another drift. The baits were just out when one was eaten. Tjoks fought the fish and I gaffed another yellowfin which was also bled and put on ice. With enough tuna fillets, we changed back to the sailfish baits and trolled back to the point where we upped lines and beached.