On Sunday 19th July,
Tjokkie, Tammy and I launched “Selfish” out of Richards Bay. We were hoping to
find a Garrick or two. We launched at 6:30 and headed to the pipeline. There
were big showings of bait and every down with the bait jigs resulted in full
strings of Maasbanker. I was hoping for a few shad so I put on some bait and
soon had about 10 shad in the live well.
 |
| Tammy with a 6.4kg Snoek on 3kg line |
We headed for the south pier and
on arrival, I saw a Garrick smashing bait on the surface. Quickly the lines
went out and I worked the area. There were about 5 other boats there and 2 fish
had come out already. I trolled a bit further south into the backline and saw a
few more chases but we just could not get a pull. I turned back to work towards
the pier again and as we were getting close, the deep bait revved and was
eaten. Tammy fed the fish but when she tightened up, the hook turned into the
shad’s head and we missed the fish. We continued trolling but things went
totally dead. I received a phone call from a friend fishing up north and he
suggested I move up that way as there were a lot of snoek around. We quickly
upped lines and ran a few kilometres north. It did not take long to see where
the fish were as several boats were working an area where the birds were
dipping and the snoek were smashing. I headed to a patch of fish that had no
other boats around and Tjokkie and I threw spoons into them. Both of us went
tight but unfortunately another fish swam into my line and bit it off. Luckily
Tjoks got his fish out. The fish were pretty stationary so it was easy to move
between the shoals. I rigged up 2 fillets and trolled them around. When we came
within casting range, I would drift and see if we could get a fish. If not, I continued
trolling. We had a few fish on the flick sticks, but pulled a lot of hooks and
had several bite the swivels off.
 |
| 9 Snoek for the day on "Selfish" |
I made a big turn around the
shoals while I was making up some tackle and one of the fillets went on. Tammy
took the strike and fought a nice snoek on 3kg line. After about 10 minutes I
gaffed the fish and marked it. The current ladies records are vacant so I didn’t
want to mix the fish up, incase we caught more. The action continued for quite
a while. The fish were gorging themselves on small sprats. These sprats would
shelter under the boat as soon as we stopped near them. The snoek would just lazily
swim through them with their mouths open. At any one time, there were 30 fish
under the boat and there were snoek jumping as far as you could see. It was
amazing to see and reminded me of the good old days of snoek fishing. The
problem was that the fish were so full that they didn’t chase the lures and
just hung with the shoals of bait. Every now and again, there would be a stupid
greedy fish and it would swallow the lure.
We did not want to get home too
late as there was still a lot of work to be done so at 3pm upped lines and
headed back with 9 snoek. Tammy’s fish weighed 6,4kg and a record claim will be
submitted for an SA and All Africa Record.
