Running out of bait

On Saturday 26^th December at 4:30, John and I launched “Drifter” out of Meerensee Boat Club. There was a 15knot SE wind blowing with a bit of rain. The sea was exceptionally uncomfortable and the ride out to the pipeline took a while. Eventually we arrived and started looking for bait. With the difficult sea conditions, we struggled to get bait. After an hour, we had about 10 livies and decided to head off to the current.

Once we were in the strong N-S current, the swell picked up and we were thrown around properly. Somehow I managed to get 4 marlin lures out and we worked our way north. There was a good current line in 85m so I spent some time working along it. We were rewarded with a dorado of around 8kg. With only 2 people on the boat and shitty seas, it was tough going to clear the lines. We were going to battle if a marlin climbed on…

We fished through the prime and at 11:30 decided to switch to live bait. John and I were slowly clearing the rods when the far lure was eaten by another nice dorado which we loaded. We were pretty close to the ledge, so I rigged up a livie and put it out on surface. As I put the rod in the holder, the reel smoked off… we were on! I pulled the fish to the boat and could make it out to be a yellowfin tuna. All of a sudden it took off and a big electric blue shape charged after it. It was a marlin trying to eat it. Knowing that we were under gunned, I did not let the marlin eat the tuna and pulled it to the boat where it was gaffed and bled. I managed to rig up 3 livies, 2 on surface and 1 deep. No sooner had we started trolling, the far surface bait went away with a good dorado. John fought the fish and when it was close to the boat, the other surface rod went away with a second dorado. We both fought fish to the boat and managed to land them both… not bad. I rerigged and trolling continued. I tacked back over the ledge and the close surface bait went away. I was busy fighting the dorado when John went away on the deep bait that he was retrieving. Both fish gave us a good fight and we managed to land both again.

A good haul of gamefish in a terribly bumpy sea

Our bait situation was looking bad and we only had 3 livies left. I only put out 2 surface baits and made another turn. Sure enough, the close bait went away. I fed the fish a bit and tightened up. A small dorado bounced around out the back and managed to throw the hook. I pinned the last livie and put it out. This time it took about 20 minutes before we had a pull. The reel smoked off and I battled to get the rod out the holder. The fish took a lot of line but unfortunately the hook just fell out. Unlucky… 

We trolled the last livie around for a while but it just felt wrong fishing with one rod, so I suggested we switch to lures and troll with the current and head home as it was getting late. I put out 4 lures and trolled south along the ledge. It was not long before we were on with another dorado.

The current was running very strong and pushed us along at 16km per hour. So we could not work the area properly and only now and then we would pass over a high point. We were just getting ready to up lines when we went away with a big skipjack which took off so quickly that it had us thinking it was a wahoo. That was the last pull for the day and we headed back at 3:30pm.