First Dorado of the season

On Saturday 21st October, Wayne, Lorenzo and I launched “Galavant” off Cape Vidal. The conditions were uncomfortable with a fine drizzle and moderate SE wind. The sea was a bit bumpy with very little pattern. Our game plan was to troll a few lures around to get an idea of where the fish were holding and then put some baits out.

Lorenzo's PB Dorado

I rigged up 3 lures and trolled south towards the lighthouse. There was not much action, so I headed a bit deeper and found a few birds dipping. As I turned through them, one reel went away. Wayne fought the fish and soon had a cuda next to the boat which I went to gaff. I unfortunately messed the entire process up when the end of the gaff got stuck in a fold in my jacket and I could not lift the fish into the boat. It shook the hooks and managed to get off the gaff… epic fail. The lures went out again and I trolled back toward the point to catch some bait. I trolled over a bit of a showing and the far lure went away. This time I made no mistake and safely lifted Wayne’s cuda into the boat.

We were almost on the bait spot, so we cleared the lines and ran to the marks. There were massive shoals of mackerel and it took all of 5 minutes to get a hatch full of bait. I rigged up 5 lines and we tacked between 18 and 28m, heading south. It was very quiet for a quite some time before I saw the far surface rod bend. I ran to the reel and would it tight. A nice dorado jumped around on top for a bit while we got Lorenzo kitted up with a bucket. The fish had a lot of line in the water so I followed after it and after about 20 minutes, we had a lovely fish in the hatch… Lorenzo’s biggest.

There were a few birds dipping ahead of us on some bonnies so I quickly threw a spoon into them. On the first cast, I went tight and the fish took a long fast run. After a strong fight, I managed to get a yellowfin tuna into the boat which was bled. I made another cast and got a beautiful jube-jube but it was hooked in the gills and died. The next cast produced another jube-jube and I immediately rigged it live. We were 100% sure it would not take long to get a pull but after working the area for an hour without any action I moved shallower and north towards the point. I had just made a deep turn when the far surface mackerel went away. The line went down immediately and we all knew it was another yellowfin which I winched in. Despite pulling the live bonnie for a few hours, it was not eaten and when we got back to the point, we released it and headed back in. All the other boats battled for fish and it seemed like we had the most fish for the day so we could not complain.