Slow Start to the Year

On Saturday 2^nd January 2016 at 4am, John and I launched “Drifter” off Richards Bay. We stopped at the pipe and filled up with livies before heading north along the ledge.

The conditions were great with a light off shore wind and crystal clean warm water with a good current. We pulled lures for a few hours working our way north, but things were very quiet. We decided to switch to bait in the hope that we would find something. I started retrieving the lines one by one while the boat was still moving at trolling speed. There were two rods left to clear when the far lure was eaten and the reel took off. John took the strike while I cleared the last line. The fish was not putting up much of a struggle and came to the boat relatively easily. When it was close to the boat, we saw that it was a wahoo. I quickly gaffed the fish before it could bite off the nylon leader and lifted it into the ice box. This was also John’s first wahoo.

I rigged up 4 livies and tacked over the ledge. Unfortunately the wind had swung to the East and things went stone dead. We trolled the livies for several hours without so much as a bump. When we reached the end of the ledge, we pulled up and headed home.