We fished Trofeu Verao yesterday. This is a 2-division comp where anglers score points for billfish and/or gamefish... so there are two first places, 2 second places, etc. The idea is that one billfish should no compete against (and defeat!) a well thought out gamefish species strategy. Only 5 fish per species are accepted and a multiplying factor of 0.5 is applied for every additional species. Only released bills are allowed. This is the second time this comp is run by Clube Naval... this year a total of 14 boats registered.
Team MAXIMVS was missing my brother Junior as he was writing a varsity exam... so it was myself, Jorge and my son Matheo. The weather and sea conditions were forecasted to be great and I thought this was a great opportunity to introduce Matheo to a bit of a not-so-serious fishing comp...
Some preparations were undertaken during the week, which included sourcing some godzilla walla-walla (1.3 m long!!!!!), which I cut in half, to target croc coutas and designing/making custom rigs for these... I wanted to try a new area located 10 nm north of my usual couta grounds. This is about 36 nm from Maputo (about 2.5 h traveling) and we were amped by the prospect of great sea conditions and plenty fish.
Our plan was to fish mainly for gamefish and try to get as many species as possible. Starting off with couta in the shallows and then move on to the deep and see if we could find sorries and yellowfin tuna. Wahoo would be a great bonus. In between we could have some surface lures for sailies....
Green light was at 5 am and we were the only boat in the water!!!!! I mean really?!?!?! Oh well... radio control told us that the horn had been sounded and we were good to go.... we carried on and the sea inside the bay wasn't as flat as promised (why am I not surprised?!?)... so we took it slow and were soon joined by other boats including peterblace's Otoro which decided to start the day chasing couta in the B1 grounds...
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The typical Maputo bay choppy seas...
Throughout the day the water temp ranged between 24-25.7o C out in the deep and it was beautifully clear. The wind kept blowing at a nice 5-7 knots NE breeze and then changed to the usual full blown Easterly in the late afternoon (about 15 knots). Lovely conditions throughout the day!!!!
As we were going relatively slow (15-17 knots), immediately after we were out of the "brown water" inside the bay, we tossed 2 of our wahoo bombs with high speed trolling sinkers. These were attached to our Makaira 50s on bent butt rods.... we had about 15 nm to cover on cleaner water, so took the chance...
We got to the area and had lines in the water with 4 rods and a spread of rappies and speedpros. Still putting on rod buckets and cameras we had a double strike of couta which, by the sound of the screaming Tiagras 30, were of good size. A bit of a chaos on board saw us dropping one of them and landing the one Matheo fought... good size good to open the score!
We worked the area a bit more... got another couta and lost one. My monster wallas were left untouched (I assume there were no croc coutas there. These wallas were almost the same size of the average rat couta
).
At about 10:30 we decided to head out to the deep and try get other species. A mixed spread was set out as follows:
Short right: Rapala x-rap silver
Short right: monster walla-walla with pink skirt
Short rigger: My Blue/white red faced resin kona with a strip bait and bird
Long rigger: Blue/pink Capt Harry's Seastar with strip bait with a bird
Shotgun: swimming naked halfbeak on a circle hook
As we were getting into the 30 m line the long rigger fired and line was being peeled off not so aggressively... the drag was loose, but as no fish jumped I initially thought it was just the tension of swell that broke the elastic band... the the rod in my hand and felt a bit of a bump.... I then realized it could be a billfish so I fed some line.... after about 10 seconds, I locked the drag and the fish didn't commit... it came back to chase the lure and took it in its mouth (I'm sure that stripbait was tasty!!!!) and I feed some more line... this time was had a good view of the fish... it was a smaller black of about 50-70 kg... anyway, we lost it after the 3rd time... this teenager would simply not eat the bloody thing.... what the lure take lien and no hook up... the lure lost an eye and I got a dent in my ego!!!!
Oh well, we kept going and went deep to try and get them in a marlin hotspot at the 200 m line taking advantage of the changing tides. Got there and about 15 min later the shotgun rigger fires... I run there and drop the drag a bit more so the reel is in freespool with only the ratchet on.... I do my count to 7 and slowly increase the drag, hoping tor that circle hook to find its spot... about 150 m out there we see something jumping... we on!!!!
Unfortunately it was not a bill, but a dorrie. In good Wicked Tuna style: "We'll take it!". This dorrie was no match for the Ti30 and after a short battle it was gaffed and the circle was right where it was supposed to be! Wasn't big, but we were hoping it would barely make the scales.
We kept going and decided to head out to Poco and take our chances with the sharks and see if we could get a yellowfin tuna. Plenty of bait around, but no takers. Time was moving on so we started heading south to another spot between Poco and Baixo Danae. Hoping for that yellowfin.
Immediately south of Poco, a few birds were working and we headed in their direction. About 2 min later, the center rigger blasts and the shotgun reel starts peeling off line. Same procedure and bang... a 7 kg yellowfin tuna, perfectly hooked in the corner of the moth with the circle hook. Yeah!
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Circle hooks WORK!!!!!
"Now we needed that wahoo to nail this thing!"... "Let's do about half way home with the wahoo bombs out on the Makaira 50s". No luck and we made it to the 5 pm deadline just 5 min before. Shew this was a close one. But we fished hard to the last minute!
In the end our 3 fish that made it to the scales, got us 2nd place in the Gamefish Division! This was Matheo's first comp and his 9 kg couta certainly helped us get to the podium....
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Three boats released bills, with Gabry taking the lead with 2 marlin. Matabixo (a 17ft Yeld - MAXIMVS little brother) took first place of the Gamefish Division with a great catch of couta and a YFT! Largest fish was a 12.1 Kg dorado caught by 4play.
All in all, we did 107 nm and used 120 L (1.12 L/nm).
Great day out, fish in the table and another score to settle with that teenage marlin!!!!
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