On Saturday 8th March,
Wayne Ritchie, his 2 sons Julio and Lorenzo, and I launched Wayne’s new boat “Da
Boyz” off Richards Bay. We were hoping to catch a few fish for the laaities so
they could get used to the deepsea fishing scene.
 |
| Feeling the burn |
At 6am we left the harbour and
headed to the pipeline. After scratching around a bit, I found a spot where the
bait was hanging out. Almost every drop, Wayne and Julio got full strings of
maasies with a few shad in between. With the livewell full, we headed out to
the ledge to look for some bonnies. I put out 4 rods and as Wayne turned onto
the pinnacle, 2 rods went on with jube jubes. Julio and I quickly pulled them
in before continuing the search. Wayne made another turn and this time, all 4
rods went away. These were not jube jubes, but bigger kawa-kawas. There was a
bit of chaos out the back, but when the dust settled, we had managed to get all
4 fish out, releasing 2 of them. We made several more turns but only caught 1
lonely skipjack that also went back. Things had gone dead so we upped lines and
headed for Petingo.
 |
| Chasing the bite |
The water was a nice colour, but
the reverse current was screaming. It was so bad that I could hardly make
headway. Never the less, I rigged 2 bonnies, a wala and a live maasbanker then
trolled up the wreck. One of the other boats had loaded half a fish earlier the
morning, but other than that, it was quiet. But 10:45 we had not had a pull and
most of the other boats had left for greener pastures. I trolled over a good
midwater showing of bait and when the lines went over it, the reel with the
wala went away. I cleared the lines while Wayne fought the fish. Knowing that
there were sharks around, we put big pressure on the fish to get it in quickly.
It was fighting very strangely and it soon became apparent that the fish was
foul hooked. Wayne brought up a shoal size cuda that was hooked in the
midsection and stone dead when I gaffed it. At lease we had something to show
for our efforts.
Despite trolling around until
after 1pm, we never had another pull so we upped lines and headed home.
