On Saturday 26th 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.
