Saturday, May 18, 2019

Kingfish and Potatoes

On Saturday 18th May 2019 at 6am, Jurgen and I launched “ABF” out of Richards Bay. I had commitments for the afternoon so we could only fish for a few hours, but when the weather is good, you need to get on the water.
Jurgen with a 20kg Potatobass
We stopped at the wave rider buoy and quickly filled the livewell with maasbanker before heading out to the ledge. The current was flying at over 4 knots and the upwelling that it caused made it very uncomfortable. I put out a few lures and quickly caught a few bonnies for cuda bait. While trolling, I looked for a decent showing, but there was nothing to write home about so we decided to put some baits out regardless. The current was challenging to say the least and we ended up killing most of the baits due to the speed at which we pulled them. To overcome this, we rigged dead baits and tried to maintain position. Just as the baits were swept past the marks, one was eaten and Jurgen had a hard fight from what turned out to be a potato bass which was tagged and released. On the next drift, we hooked a shark that chafed us off. 
We decided to make one last drift and try a live bait. I stopped the boat a long way up current and Jurgen managed to get the bait in the right spot. He got a solid bite and hooked a fish that gave big head nods. We thought it was another potato bass but when it finally showed itself, we were pleasantly surprised. It was a nice GT of 103cm which we tagged and released.

After catching a great fish in the short morning session, we decided to head back to port.

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