Fickle 'Fins

At 7:30 on Sunday 15th June, Tammy and I launched “Selfish” off Richards Bay. We were keen to try for anything that would bite and it was really just a relaxing day on the water with fantastic weather.

We stopped at the pipe and filled the live well with mackerel and Maasbanker before heading to the kasteel. There were already a few boats there but it seemed quiet. I put out 2 daisy chains and 2 halfbeaks and trolled north into the current. It did not take long to get a pull and both daisy chains went on. Tammy and I pulled in a mix of small jube-jubes and yellowfin. The jubies went into the tube while the yellowfin were released. The current had pushed us back a bit so we trolled north again. Again the two chains went away followed by one of the halfheak. We winched in some more jubies and then a yellowfin that ate the halfbeak, which was released. We were battling to get north with the current as every time I stopped to pull in a yellowfin, we would drift back so I left only the chains in and trolled on the current line instead of over the reef. This seemed to work as all the pulls we had were jubies and no more yellowfins.

Finally we were far enough north to put out baits. I put a live bonnie down deep, a live maasie mid-way and a live mackerel on surface on the spinning rod… looking for trouble. I tacked over the reef a bit but nothing was happening. I checked the bonnie and found it to be dead. There were some scrape marks on it where a bigger tuna had grabbed it but not eaten it. I rigged up another one and sent it down. On the next pass over the reef, the rod went away at a very slow pace. There were a few nods then it headed to sea. Even on sunset with 50Lbs line I could not stop it. Finally I managed to break it off and we could continue fishing. I checked the other baits and saw that the surface mackerel had been mouthed by a fish so it was replaced with a fresh one. I put a live mackerel down deep and continued trolling. After a bit, I checked the deep bait and found that it too had been mouthed. There were a few fish around, but they were not eating properly. I was still busy putting a fresh bait on when the surface mackerel went away. Tammy fed it a bit and tightened up. The fish took some line but then settled to a strong deep fight. After 15 minutes or so, Tammy was taking strain and rather that have a shark eat the fish, she passed the rod to me and I put some more pressure on it. Not long after, we had a nice 18kg yellowfin on the leader and Tammy passed me the gaff. It was a bit awkward to fight and gaff the fish especially with it being quite feisty. In the end, I just put the gaff in anywhere so that the fight would be over… turns out the gaff shot was not that great… at least the circle hook was hooked in the right place. We bled the fish and put it on ice.

Bleeding a nice yellowfin 

We fished on for a while but it was very quiet. There seemed to be quite a few yellowfin around and the marks on the sounder indicated that they were the culprits mouthing the deep baits and the wire traces scared them off a bit. One of the boats near us was fishing in a competition and needed them for points so they sent a tuna bait down and ended up with 3 of them in the 13-16kg class. We had enough tuna in the freezer so I was not keen on catching another one. It was getting late so we took the cuda baits out and put out the two chains and trolled south along the ledge heading home. We managed to catch a decent number of the bonnies to fill the bait freezer. In all, it was a good day.