Losing baits chop chop...

On Saturday 20^th June, At, Tammy, my Dad and I launched “AVANTI” out of Cape Vidal. We were hoping to get a sailfish for Tammy. We caught a few livies before putting out the sailfish spread… just incase.

Sunrise at Cape Vidal... Beautiful!

I had a similar setup as we used in Angola with 4 spinning rods and 4 halfbeaks. Two behind the teaser and two off the riggers. All were rigged with circle hooks and fluorocarbon leaders. There was an exceptional amount of bait in the water, from red eyes, maasbanker and mackerel to frigates and jube-jubes. The sounder was packed with bait showings. There was a current line at 45m so we focussed our efforts between 50 and 30m. It did not take long before there was a strike on the close bait. It was a wahoo that smashed the halfbeak then doubled back towards the teaser and picked up the main line in its mouth and then bit us off while still in freespool. Several turns later resulted in two more wahoo smashing the baits and neatly slicing the hooks off before the riggers even popped. Pretty frustrating… Luckily I had rigged several spare baits and leaders and could replace them as soon as they were lost.

Pre-rigging a few sailfish baits

At made a shallower turn and both close baits were eaten. Unfortunately both baits returned neatly sliced off behind the heads. I assumed that they were cuda but who knows. We made a few more turns but things were quiet. I decided to check the baits and found that both rigger baits were chopped. This was getting ridiculous…

We decided to stick to the current line to avoid the cuda and were rewarded with a dorado of around 6kg that found its way into the hatch… Finally! Trolling continued but it went very quiet, apart from a small yellowfin that crushed one of the long baits. With the fish being pretty shy due to the abundance of bait, I put the one long bait 50m back. At around 3pm, this rigger popped and Tammy fed the fish. When she tightened up, the line ran off the reel at a medium pace. All of us were looking back when the fish went on an exceptionally fast run on the surface. Through the white water it was making, we could see that it was a billfish, but we could not id it as a big sailfish or a small marlin. At had slowed the boat and we were bringing in the other lines when the fish went even faster! Before the drag could be slacked off, the 10kg line unfortunately parted. Not great…

We rerigged and trolled to the point before heading in. We had tried our best, but unfortunately that’s how it goes. I'm sure we will try again and hopefully be more successful.

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.