Weehoos

On Saturday 6^th February 2021 at 7am, Wayne, Willis, Dereck, Rian and I launched “Galavant” off Cape Vidal. It was just a boys weekend to get away a bit, so there were no plans nor expectations of catching anything too spectacular. Besides, an Easterly wind was predicted for the day and that normally means poor catches.

We stopped off on the bait marks to look for some livies. There were big showings but they were not eating the clean sabikis. Luckily, we had brought some sardines with and after tipping the hooks with small pieces, we started catching a few. The shoal soon came up from the bottom and were just under the boat. I started chumming a bit and they went wild. At one stage, they were eating the sardine I was holding in my hands. The gopro footage is very cool. After fishing in this aquarium for a bit, we headed up north to Vegetation and put out a few baits. It was very quiet but as the day went on, we started getting a few pulls. Unfortunately, the fish were not hooking up and by 11am we only had one 10kg tuna on the boat from 7 pulls. 

We decided to make a move and head deeper to see if there was an amberjack on the drop-off. Rian and I sent down livies and I managed to get a proper pull. The fish had me pinned to the gunwale for a bit until I managed to gain a few meters and get its head up. Rian took over the rod and felt some heavy pressure as he heaved the fish off the rocks. It was a long way to the surface and eventually a beautiful tropical yellowtail came up. It was Rian’s first and nothing could wipe the smile off his face.

Rian with a weehoo

The next drop resulted in another hookup with a good fish that gave Willis a strong tussle. There were big head nods and some strong runs thrown in… the fish fought too. Unfortunately, halfway up, there was a heavy weight followed by a freight train run that couldn’t be stopped. Just then, the leader was bitten through by what we assume was a taxman. There was not much more action after that and just when we were about to pack up, a mate of mine called to say they had found a net a short distance away. We headed in that direction and on arrival there were a few dorado to meet us. I changed the rigs to a short nylon leader and a single hook with a livie pinned through the nose. We slow trolled these just behind the flasher and managed to get 3 quick dorries. When we came close to the net, Rian cast a bucktail and went on with a small fish that looked like a sarda sarda.

Dereck's weehoo

When it was in the boat, we couldn’t believe what it was. It was the smallest wahoo any of us had ever
seen… a real weehoo. We took turns casting at the net and managed to release 3 weehoo and lost about 5. While this was going on, the far line went away. I fed it and hooked up then passed the rod to Rian. The fish made a hell of a run on the surface and we could just make out the dark shape before it sounded. It showed no sign of stopping and after about 150m straight down, it settled into that slow rod thumping fight. About 20 minutes into the fight on a heavy drag, with the fish about 50m down, there were a few head nods followed by another hectic run. Unfortunately, Rian was too slow to ease the drag and the line parted near the fish. It was a bit disappointing, but that’s how it goes. We spent a bit more time around the net but didn’t have any more success so headed back to the beach.

In all it was a great day with a lot of laughs.