First Garrick of the Season

On Saturday 6^th August, Wayne, Lorenzo and I launched “Da Boys” off Richards Bay. We were hoping to get into some snoek and Garrick action. Our first stop was to get livies which proved very challenging and could not find a single one. I headed shallower to the shark nets and found a few showings. Wayne and I started getting a mix of pinkies and shad and soon we were heading up north.

Lorenzo with his first garrick

I put out a few snoek baits and slowly trolled north. As we were going, we saw a few birds dipping. I fired a small spoon at them and on the third turn of the handle, I went on to a snoek. It didn’t take long to boat the fish and we could follow the birds to get another one. Despite putting the lure right in front of the snoek, we could not get another pull. The action subsided and we continued north. We heard of some action a bit further north, so we changed to a few rapalas and feathers to get there a bit faster. A few minutes later Wayne went on with a snoek which also found it's way into the hatch.

The snoek had sounded and things were very quiet. We decided to head into the backline and look for a Garrick. There was a beautiful colourline in 4m of water so we spent some time working alone it. After about an hour, we had a pull and went tight with a small Garrick. We gave the rod to Lorenzo and he had his hands full with his first Garrick. After about 20 minutes, I put the gaff into the fish and hauled it onboard. We made another turn over the same spot and had a Garrick come charging in to eat a shad, but it turned off at the last second. It bumped one of the further baits o the way back, but never ate it. Sometimes they can be difficult like that. We spent some more time along the colour line but had no more pulls so we headed back to port.