At 5:30 on Saturday 7th December
2019, At, Pierre and I launched “Avanti” off Cape Vidal. The NE wind was
blowing but a SW was predicted for mid morning. There was a bit of surf, but
the launch was uneventful. The first stop was to catch live bait off the point
which proved to be challenging compared to most days, but after 45 minutes, we
had a decent supply and headed south towards the lighthouse.
Pierre and I rigged up a few baits and settled
in to wait. It was pretty quiet for about an hour before we got our first
dorado in the boat. There seemed to be a few fish in the shallows, so we headed
to that area. On the way, we had a pull on the deep line, but pulled the hooks
on what was probably a cuda. At turned at about 15m and sure enough as the
lines straightened out, the close reel went away with our second dorado. The NE
started settling as the SW approached, but the fish also went quiet. Apart from
another small dorado and a big shark, things were quiet. We were positive that
when the wind turned that we would get a few more pulls.
At 11am, the SW came through at 15knots,
picking up the sea a bit. By then we were far south so we had a big area to
work back. There was not much current so with the boat’s nose facing north with
the wind, we drifted towards home at a perfect speed. It took about half an
hour for the fish to start biting and within an hour we had quite a few
strikes. The majority of the pulls were dorado but I did manage to get a
yellowfin tuna of around 8kg. It gave me a good rev on a long cuda rod.
At 2pm, we were off the lighthouse and the
hatch was pretty full. We knew that there was a lot of filleting work to do, so
we pulled in the livies and put on 3 small konas to troll home. The lines were
out for a short while when the close lure had a bump but the fish missed the
hooks. Moments later the far line had a bump. This time we could see that it
was a sailfish having a go at the lure. Unfortunately, it missed the hook
despite grabbing it 3 times. With that, we upped lines and headed home.
On Sunday 8th December, At and I
launched “Avanti”. The SW was still blowing so we headed south into the wind
pulling small lures and strip baits as we went. It didn’t take long to get a
pull and soon had a nice dorrie in the boat. Soon after, we missed on that
threw the hooks. It was about 8am when we rigged the first livies and the lines
were just set when the two close lines went away with dorries. At and I fought
fish to the boat and landed both of them. At turned to troll over the same spot
when we had another pull but it threw the hooks after a few seconds. Not to
worry as moments later another dorrie ate the close bait and we had 4 fish in
the hatch. We thought it was going to be a bumper morning, but just like that,
things went stone dead. For a few hours, we had no action but finally as we
passed the lighthouse, two rods went away. One was a really nice fish that took
a lot of line. While this was going on, I saw a free swimmer, pitched it a bait
and went straight on. The 3 fish were jumping everywhere but the show had to go
on so I put out another livie close to the boat. It was barely 10m out when a
dorado came flying in and grabbed. Now we had our hands full but luckily we stayed
attached and boated all four fish.
We had drifted a long way from where we had
hooked them so At trolled back on that line. It wasn’t long before we were on
again. This time it was a bigeye kingfish that we released. It seemed like the
shoal had moved on as we didn’t get another pull in that area so we headed
north towards the point. Just before we upped lines, I managed to get one last
dorado for the weekend. At noon, we headed back to the beach.
