Tuff Tuna

On Saturday 28^th May, Wayne Ritchie, Lorenzo and I launched “Da Boys” off Richards Bay. The weather forecast was perfect and we were looking forward to a great day on the water. We stopped at the pipeline and looked for bait. There were very few showings around and all the boats struggled to find anything. There were a few shad and the odd Maasbanker but we had to really work for each of them. Finally we happened upon a decent showing and before hitting the bottom, went on with some bait. They turned out to be some really big mackerel which were finally able to move up north to look for some fish.

Wayne with a 20kg Yellowfin.

After a half hour run, I put out a few small rapalas and fillets and trolled north tacking between 15 and 25m. There were no showings or any signs of surface activity. At about 8:30, one of the cd7 rapalas was eaten and the reel smoked off. This was definitely not a snoek… Wayne took the strike while I cleared the other lines. The fish had a lot of line in the water by the time I had the deck clear so I slowly followed the fish to allow Wayne to put some line on the reel. The fish stayed on surface for a while before sounding. Initially we thought that the fish was a cuda, but it was becoming apparent that it was a yellowfin especially when we could see the tail beats on the rod tip. After 45 back breaking minutes, the fish was close to the boat, but it had no intention of coming closer. 

Lorenzo with a slinger

The long rod and big swell made it extremely difficult for Wayne to gain line on the fish and after an hour, he relinquished the rod to me. It seemed like a fresh pair of arms is what was needed and after another 10 minutes of circling, the fish came within range and Wayne managed to gaff a good size yellowfin. We could not believe that a fish could be that strong, but when we took a closer look, it all made sense. 

The fish had been hooked in the top of the head making it very difficult to fight. No matter, we had some fresh tuna steaks on the menu. The fish pulled a 20kg hand scale flat, so we were pretty chuffed.

Trolling resumed but without any more action. Lorenzo was keen to catch a few fish himself, so we stopped on one of the shallow reefs and sent down a light bottomfish rig. For the next hour, we had a ball with the many bottomfish species. We kept 5 fish for the pot and released the rest.

The wind started picking up so we decided to head back home. All in all, it was a great day on the water.