On Sunday 5th July,
Ray, Marnus and I launched “My Wish” out of Richards Bay. There had not been
too many fish around the last while but we were hoping to at least hear a reel
or two during the day.
We rerigged and I trolled over
the showing again. This time the bait just revved a bit followed by a slight
bump on the rod. Marnus checked the bait and found that there were a few teeth marks
on it and it had been squashed slightly.
A fresh bait was rigged and I made another pass over the reef. Again the bait revved and the rod tip bumped a bit before going quiet. The bait had the same marks on it as the previous one. I could still not make out what they were so we tried once more. As I was nearing the mark, a shoal of redeyes popped up on surface so I lowered the sabikis into them and caught a few snoek baits. While this was going on, the deep bait went away. Marnus passed the rod to Ray who had a good tussle on his hands. I moved the boat away from the structure just in case it was a kingfish that wanted to cut us off. The fish fought deep and there were constant tail beats so we all assumed it was another king, but when it came into view, it turned out to be a big kawa-kawa.
I made a few more passes over the marks, but there was no more action so we upped lines and ran a bit further north and put out a few baits for snoek / cuda but after a few hours with no luck, we headed back to the harbour. The water looked good around the pier so we pulled some livies around hoping for a Garrick, but despite there being a lot of baitfish activity, we never had any pulls and headed home.
We stopped off at the pipe line
and caught a few livies before heading towards 5mile. The swell was pretty big
so we could not get too close to the backline but the small reef that I have
been fishing the past few days was fishable. I rigged up a few livies and
trolled onto the showing. It did not take long for us to get a pull and after a
bit of a stubborn fight, Marnus had a blackspot kingfish in the boat. At least
the ice had been broken.
 |
| Bonnie and kingfish |
A fresh bait was rigged and I made another pass over the reef. Again the bait revved and the rod tip bumped a bit before going quiet. The bait had the same marks on it as the previous one. I could still not make out what they were so we tried once more. As I was nearing the mark, a shoal of redeyes popped up on surface so I lowered the sabikis into them and caught a few snoek baits. While this was going on, the deep bait went away. Marnus passed the rod to Ray who had a good tussle on his hands. I moved the boat away from the structure just in case it was a kingfish that wanted to cut us off. The fish fought deep and there were constant tail beats so we all assumed it was another king, but when it came into view, it turned out to be a big kawa-kawa.
I made a few more passes over the marks, but there was no more action so we upped lines and ran a bit further north and put out a few baits for snoek / cuda but after a few hours with no luck, we headed back to the harbour. The water looked good around the pier so we pulled some livies around hoping for a Garrick, but despite there being a lot of baitfish activity, we never had any pulls and headed home.
