Early morning bite

On Saturday, our last fishing day at Vidal, John, Amanda, Tash, Kye and I launched. The previous few days, there had been a lot of early action from dorado by guys fishing with dead bait, so I decided to leave the early live bait catching session and focus on deadbait for a while. I rigged up 2 swimbaits and 2 stripbaits and trolled south along the same current line from the previous day. It took all of 5 minutes to get a double strike, but unfortunately pulled hook on both. I made another turn and went on. Amanda got a dorado in the hatch to open the account and trolling continued. In the next half an hour, we managed another 5 dorado from 6 pulls before the bite slowed. By then, I was pretty close to the bait spot so pulled lines and caught a few livies.

Kye with his first dorado

There had been quite a few fish on the point so I headed back there and set the spread. Things were very quiet, so I headed a bit south of the crowd and tacked deeper to see if the fish were out there. In 30m, we went on with a dorado and then again in 25m so I worked the area a bit. At one stage we were on to a dorado and when it was near the boat, I saw a big fin of a shark making a b-line towards the fish. I put the reel into freespool and let the dorado get away from the shark. When it had settled, we brought it in but unbelievably, the shark came in for a second try at the dorado. We followed the same protocol and this time it worked and the dorado was safely on board.

With the unsettled sea, Kye got a bit seasick and we decided to head back. We had one line left in the water when a dorado came swimming behind the motors. John threw a stick bait at in and went on immediately. The fish put up little resistance before being loaded. We headed back to the beach by 10:30 with a good haul of fish.