On Sunday 1st December 2013 at 5:30, Pierre, At and I launched “AVANTI” at Cape Vidal. The SW was blowing quite strong and the sea was very uncomfortable. Normally we would not have gone out, but the weather had been so bad the last few months, that we were desperate to get on the water to catch some fish and stock the freezers! We started out off the point looking for livebait. The showings were few and far between and by 6am, we had not found anything yet. At worked a bit further south and in 22m found a showing. Pierre and I sent the jigs down and immediately went on with full strings of maasbankers. As I lifted mine into the boat, Pierre shouted that there were dorado around the boat. His words were not cold when 3 dorado came flying into his bait string and stole the maasies off the hooks. There was a mad dash for rods to get a bait in the water. I grabbed a flickstick, that had a single already attached, pinned a maasie and pitched it overboard. As it hit the water, a dorado came flying in and engulfed the bait... on! As the fish went wild, doing cartwheels, I put the rod in the holder and grabbed another rod. I looked over to see Pierre and At both bending on fish! I pinned another bait on a cuda trace and flicked it out... on again! While this was going on, the first fish on the flickstick came off so I switched rods in the holder and rerigged a trace before casting another bait... same result! When the dust settled, we had 4 fish in the hatch from 5 strikes... not too shabby for 6:20am.
At went back to the spot where we caught the bait, but the shoal had scattered due to the dorado. We headed up north again and drifted back to the bait area. Pierre had rigged up a halfbeak which I put out the back, just incase. It was not long before the rod keeled over and the reel screamed. Pierre leaned over to slack the drag, but knocked the reel into freespool! I’ll leave the result up to your imagination.
Finally we drifted over a good showing and got a few maasbanker. I rigged up 2 surface lines and 2 deep lines and At trolled the area. We waited a whole 10 minutes for a reel to go and as this dorado was brought to the boat, the shoal came with it. This time we were prepared and fired 2 live baits out on the spinning rods. Instant hook-ups! We managed to get all of the fish in and reset the lines. At found an area where the water temp came up to 25.8 degrees and there were a few bait marks on the echo. A shoal of flying fish erupted nearby and as we came into the area, the 2 surface baits went away. At this stage, we knew what to expect, so when the fish were brought to the boat, 2 live baits were fired out, direction did not seem to matter. This resulted in one or two more hook-ups. At found another good bait showing which resulted in another 5 maasies. As I rigged them, they were eaten by hungry dorado. At one stage, Pierre and I were fighting fish when the deep line went away. The reel initially went away quickly then slowed down to a constant speed and the fish headed to sea. The rod was left in the holder as we all said it was a shark. We ignored that rod and loaded the 2 dorado. Attention then turned to the other rod which had stopped running. I retrieved the line to fine the bait still on the trace. It was squeezed to a pulp... obviously a billfish and not a shark ...whoops J Eventually the bait stocks ran out so I put out live seapike, but could not get a pull. When we checked the lines, there were free swimmers around the boat, but none would take these baits.
By noon, we decided to call it a day as there was a lot of work to be done. Back at the cleaning area we found that we had 19 dorado. We filleted all the fish and vacuum packed them so that the friends, visiting from inland, would have something to take home. It was a great day on the water and a great start to the festive season!
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