At 5:30 on Sunday 14th
September John and I launched “Drifter” off Richards Bay. We were hoping to
catch some small tuna on the new spinning rods that John had bought. As always,
we stopped on the pipe to look for bait. On the first few downs, we caught
mackerel and shad. We spent some more
time getting a few Maasbanker and then headed to the ledge. The SW wind was
blowing about 5-10 knots but this was enough to keep the occasional rain squall
passing over us. With the squalls, there was a stronger gust of wind that made
a constant drift pattern very difficult. On the first 2 drifts, we never had a
touch but finally on the 3rd attempt, we had a pull but the leader
was bitten through.
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| John with a 10.9kg Kawa-Kawa |
The showing was very good near
the bottom, so I set a bait with an 8oz sinker and as we neared the pinnacle,
the rod keeled over. I fought a strong fish to the boat and after a good tussle
ad a big kawa-kawa of around 9kg on board. The next drift was a carbon copy of
the previous one and I soon had a second big kawa. I switched my rod to a
surface bait and put John’s deeper down. Near the end of the drift, his reel
took off and he had his hands full with a really strong fish. After a while the
fish was near the boat when it took off and there were those dreaded bumps as a
shark ate the fish. John retrieved the head of a nice amberjack. I slowly
headed back to the pinnacle and put out a daisy chain to quickly catch some
bonnies. It did not take long to go tight. John had the string of bonnies ear
the boat when another shark grabbed them and the chase was on… Eventually it
bit the leader off.
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| Whats left after tax... |
On the next drift, John went on
again with a strong fish. We both thought that it could be an amberjack, but
after a long fight, a huge bonnie popped up next to the boat. It was one of the
biggest that I had ever seen so I gaffed it to weigh. On the trip up to start
the drift, we picked up a small bonnie that went into the bait box. The last
drift never produced a pull so we upped lines and headed to the south pier. We
tried there for a while around the south pier, but had no luck. When an ominous
rain cloud was looming, we headed home to prevent being soaked.
The bonnie weighed 10.9kg, 100 grams off the current All Tackle South African Record.
