On Saturday 2nd Feb,
Hansie and I launched “ABF” off vidal. There had been a lot of fish caught the
previous day so we were pretty sure we would find some too. After an uneventful
launch, we headed south towards the lighthouse to look for live bait. It didn’t
take long to find big showings and every down was a full string so we could be
very selective.
With the live well full, we needed
to decide where we would start fishing. Hansie suggested we deeper to look for
some jube-jubes to target the bigger cuda. I had no better ideas so we headed for
the first shoal of bonnies that we saw. I put out a daisy chain while Hansie threw
a spoon. It didn’t take long to get a bonnie and it went into the tube. On the
next cast, Hansie had a dorado chase the spoon so I reeled in the chain, pinned
a livie on the back hook and flicked it out. Almost immediately I went on. When
the dorado was next to the boat, it had a follower so we tried to hook it. Unfortunately,
it disappeared before we could throw it a bait, so we brought the hooked fish
closer. It made one last jump next to the boat and threw the hook!
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| Hans putting pressure on. |
Knowing there was another fish
around, I pinned another livie on the chain and left it out the back while we
kept pace with the bonito shoal. It did not take long to get a pull but
unfortunately the fish ate one of the feathers instead of the livie so we
missed it. Eventually, I managed to hook another dorado and when it was next to
the boat, Hansie hooked a livie onto the spoon he was throwing and fed it to
the follower. He went on immediately and the fight was on... After some fun and
games, we managed to get both fish into the hatch. There were obviously a few
dorado around, so we rigged up a few livies and slow trolled them between the
bonnies. We managed to get a few pulls and soon had 5 dorado on the boat before
things went quiet.
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| My turn with a dorrie |
Other boats that were fishing a bit
shallower on the current line were still getting a few fish so I headed shallower.
As we passed through the line, we went on with another dorado which we boated.
A friend fishing nearby called me up and asked if I could give him a few livies
as they had none left. They just stopped next to us when we went on to another
fish. Only once we had landed it, could we pass the livies over. We had done our
good deed for the day and were soon rewarded with another dorado pull.
The wind changed to the SE and
the bite slowed. I suggested we up lines and run a bit north, back to the
bonnies as I was sure there would be more gamefish around them. We had just put
the lines out when two reels smoked off. Hansie had a dorado on while I have
what I thought was a tuna as it sounded immediately after hooking up.
Unfortunately, my fish came off but Hansie managed to get his into the boat.
More and more boats were moving
to the area we were working, and when it started getting a bit cramped, we
upped lines and headed north to where the other boats had come from. There was
a nice current line at 30m so we put out the baits.
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| Great day of wall to wall dorado action. |
We were looking back when
the rod with the deep bait bent then straightened after a fish missed the hooks.
I retrieved the line and a dorado followed the skirt to the surface. It turned
and ate the close bait and went tight. It was a better fish and gave Hansie a
good fight. I started clearing the lines but then noticed a follower so I
pinned a bait and flicked it out. The fish ate the bait but missed the hooks. I
quickly pinned a second bait but the exact same thing happened again! The third
bait proved to be lucky and I hooked the second fish. A short while later, we
had both fish in the hatch.
It was now 1pm. We knew we had a
lot of cleaning work to do so we upped lines and headed home after an awesome
day’s fishing.
