Here goes, Morrungulo December 2012
We decided to drive to Nelspruit on the 14
th and visit/sleep over at friends place so that we can drive through to the border at first light the next morning which did turn out that way and seeing as we were on holiday had a good couple of lager to catch up on the happenings. Luckily the rest of the party got away a bit late the next morning and we decided to meet up at Komati to fill up and drive from there as a group seeing as we were sleeping over at Casa Lisa that night. We expected to wait a bit but nothing more than 2-3 hours which turned out to be 6 hours and finally at 18h30 we started our journey into Mozambique and I for one was dreading Maputo at 19h30 towing a boat behind on a saterday night with the amount of cars we saw at the border, granted it’s only 4,2m and made out of mostly rubber and air! It took us the best of an hour, one car hitting (luckily) the pontoon at the back and endless
and a couple of new grey hear and we were through the worst and at 21h00ish we stopped at Casa Lisa and consumed a couple of
for the nerves. The next day was uneventful and the progress made in Moz was quite amazing seeing as the last time we were up there was in 2001.
Now the fishing was substandard as is the case when I go fishing. For 2 weeks there was a constant S-SE wind that blew with a couple of days that it really howled and no boats launched, the odd E came through but in general most of the days where fishable. We tried from the side about 3 times when the wind died down a bit but there was a huge side wash with huge amount of weeds clogging your line and washing ashore. 6-8 ounch grapnel sinkers was the norm cause otherwise it was not even 5 minutes and you where 50m down the beach or on the side with ball off weed and somewhere inside there a nice 4/0 Chokka sard combo waiting for a finger. Also had a couple of sessions of spinning with only one good mash at the old hotel at pomene but again the wind was pumping in your face the whole time which made life difficult. So all in all we had 3 sessions with bait and 3 spinning session from the side which produce 1 strike on a 2 ounce yellow chisel nose. To be honest we didn’t really push that hard from the side as we could but rather spend a bit more time with softness seeing as we launched at 05h00-06h00 in the mornings and return anywhere from 08h00 to 10h30 which was followed by breakfast and the first siesta then it was beach with the wife and the 2
nd siesta on the beach like a proper boemie!
We launched 7 time with the first 2 session spent looking for structure and not finding really good spots to the north of the launch. Granted we weren’t comfortable going out 13km to Sylvia shoal on our first outings with a little 4.2m ducky with a small 40 mariner on its ass and not really knowing how the boat handles the ocean didn’t help a lot. That’s where willingness to help came to our rescue. As me and my old man sat around pondering what we needed to do the next day to get to a couple of spots(we had 2 waypoints within 8 km from launch) a guy called Pieter came and asked us how the days fishing went. He then invited us over to their campsite where he produced his laptop and loaded all of his waypoints from all over onto my Garmin. All of a sudden we had every single spot known in the area, from diving spots to fishing spots to known shade trees on our way back to PTA. The 3
rd session was spend finding the reefs closes to use and trawling every colour rapala and halco in our box at different speed for whatever is willing to bite. As we trolled over the 3rd spot the first reel went on a slow run which slowed down to almost stopping. Puzzled I told my dad to keep going and all of a sudden a rockcod popped up 10m behind the boat. It was a proper size one as well est. of 5kg but the hooks pulled not to long after that and the first fish was lost.
The average water temp displayed on the fishfinder was about 30deg which sounded way too high to be true but the oil slick of dead plankton on the surface said there was something not lekker in the water with all the fish hiding in the deep between 15m-20m on the reefs that we worked and all of them hanging on the offshore side of the reefs with not one showing on the inshore side. At the end of the day a slow troll with a sard or a carapo gave us the best success with a nice snoek, tropical yellowtail and a strike of a billie which we lost within 20 second of the strike and left us with a piece coiled up piano wire and an almost smoking tld 15. We also had a couple of nice fights with size bonnies on the flick stick with another rockcod on a spoon as well. We had a lot of fun the one day with a lot of black tip kingies on the halco crazy deeps being trolled as slow as 4 km/h over some of the shallower (8m) reefs having caught 5 or so with a great/pickhandle barracuda inbetween just for fun. The bigger boats that could reach Sylvia’s didn’t do to good either with a lot of them moaning that the fishing not being up to standard, even the spearos were battling and the reports from them were that there was not a lot around and that they all lay deep. Note that the sub standard is still 2
or snoekies a day with other boats that really worked for there fish getting 4-6 a day. The biggest fish I heard of was a 30 kg
caught the day we packed up to go.
All in all a great trip with excellent fishing potential and the easiest launch in the world (one shore dumper and you’re in “backline”). Next time we will be better geared, more experienced and a little bit less afraid seeing as it was the first time in about 10 years that we launched again.
Will I recommend the place to anybody>>>> NO, why would I want to share the this awesome place with anybody if it could be mine alone!
