Inhaca trip report - L Hooker MArch 2017

[L Hooker]

Another trip to Inhaca has come and gone and it was great. I try organise at least 1 fishing trip with my old man each year and this year again we decided upon Inhaca. So my Dad flew up from CT and we headed out of Pretoria on the Tuesday around 11 am , the trup went without issue and once again I'm very pleased with the towing capabilities of my hilux. (Average fuel consumption was around 7.3km/ltr on the trip). From Pta we headed through Ressano and made our way through to Palmeiras for the night

At the rose

[L Hooker]

The Wednesday morning we woke up early and headed for the Maritimo to do our inspection. No issues with inspection so we headed off to Escola Nautico , at Escola we met up with Marcos (Big thanks to Pedro and MArcos for the help !!! As always its really appreciated guys, pity we did not see you guys on the water).

The crossing to Inhaca went without a hitch and we arrived at Pestana jetty to be met by Zito too offload all stuff and head off to Manico.

Pic of Quad ride from Pestana to Manico

[L Hooker]

Manico camp looking good with Zito at the helm 

[L Hooker]

The following day unfortunately the wind picked up and althou we tried spinning of Portuguese for about an hr that afternoon we gave up as the wind was rather unpleasant and the fish had lock jaw. So we simply tied traces and finished off the day early hoping to get an early start the following morning.

Some pics of the boat at Manico with tide in and out.

[L Hooker]

The Friday morning the wind had dropped off so we woke up early and decided to head out to the deeper reefs. We decided to power drift some macks and quickly got into some great couta, we caught 7 or 8 the couta and then decided to do some spinning and caught a number of scad and small bonnies on bullet type spoons and small stick baits. We lost quite a few spoons so decided to tackle up with some steel wire and had some incredible top water hits by couta however non stuck and they quickly went off the bite. We decided to move over to some drop shot and put on some 6inch MCarthy paddletails.

[L Hooker]

We lost countless fish before I managed to get this decent king to stick on a paddle tail.

[L Hooker]

My Dad was not feeling great as he had just changed his medication so we cut the day short and headed back to Manico.

The following morning was the Saturday and with wind predictions looking good we decided to get an early night so had a quick braai and headed for bed.

Dad, Sean and I

[L Hooker]

The Saturday morning we headed out early to the same reef we had fished the previous day and quickly got into some nice couta once again, we caught 6 couta biggest around 14kg and decided to do some spinning.

We caught small GT's, and a few other king species yellow tail, big eye as well as an some amberjack . Unfortunately the sharks pulled in and after retrieving a few amberjack heads :x :x we decided to call it quits.

[L Hooker]

Around 1pm we headed out to the deep to try get a bill, the water was green water upto around the 350m mark where it suddenly changed over to some lovely purple/blue water. Upon getting to the 4oom mark we saw a few other boats in the distance and these where the boats fishing the Club Naval comp I believe. We started putting lines out and whilst letting out the long cnr I saw a bill come into the spread an hit the long cnr, he took off and after a long run made a few jumps and threw the hook, 10 minutes from lines in and we already have a bill in the spread :D We quickly calmed ourselves down and reset the spread, not too much later we saw another bill come into the spread and hit the short rigger , he took off on a long run did a jump and slack!  Not sure what happened however the line parted some where above the bimini so I can only assume it had picked up a nick in the line??? After some choice words and me feeling rather upset about losing my Pakula sprocket I re- rigged and reset the spread. It went quite for about another hr and we then had one of the elastics pop. Turned out to be a nice Dorado bull which we quickly landed and put in the hatch.

By now it was around 3:30 and we decided to start heading back towards Inhaca zig zagging our way down, we had another dorado hit one of our lines however he did not stick so we reset and continued. Not much later one of the elastics popped and out jumped another bill , he did some great dancing for us and threw the hook :x , by now we had 3 bills in the spread and had lost all 3 . Once again we rest the spread and continued heading back to Inhaca.

Around 4pm another elastic popped we where on!! This time the hook held and we where treated to some awesome jumps, by the time we had cleared the lines I was already onto the backing and had a lot of line out. I offered my Dad the fish however he was pretty tired and said I should take it, so with my Dad behind the wheel we started chasing the bill down. After about 45 min I managed to retrieve the majority of the line however the fish was sitting deep and I was battling to lift him, eventually we saw leader and then a tail. The bill was tail wrapped possibly explaining why it was so difficult in lifting him??

We tried reviving him however to no avail, so eventually decided to boat him.

[L Hooker]

Tail wrapped

[L Hooker]

If I had know how simply unbelievable that afternoon was to be in terms of marlin , I would have not fished for couta in the morning and would have spent the whole day in the blue targeting bills !! :roll: That's fishing thou!!

So in roughly 3 1/2 hrs we had 4 marlin on and managed to land one, which in my book is incredible and most definitely the most productive couple of hrs ive ever had chasing bills!!!! Later upon our return we found out the other boats had 13 I believe had managed to land TnR 30 odd bills wow wow wow.

A few of the couta from the morning fishing

[L Hooker]

The wind was to pick up on the Sunday which it did and we decided to cut our trip short as Monday was also to be a blow out with winds increasing. The crossing to Maputo on the sunday morning was horrendous, with the ferry and all other transfers being cancelling the crossing. It took us about 1/12 hrs to cross in a horrible southerly, not something I would like to do again. We arrived back in Pta on the sunday afternoon with no incident.

Hope you chaps enjoy the report.

Pedro, Marcos once again thanks chaps 

[SAfish]

  Awesome report and photos. Congratulations on your great catches. If all fishing trips went like this it would be really tough to get any work done in between them. 

[CRANKMAN]

Brilliant Sheldon, great report and pics  Inhaca seems to be a happy hunting ground for you guys.

[L Hooker]

Thanks Marty/Shaun next time you chaps must join, promise wont leave u behind this time 

[L Hooker]

Thanks Herman was very lekker bud!

[FishStyx]

Lovely stuff Sheldon... Damn...    for that GT. Thanks for the report bud 

[Rory mundy]

Great trip there bud how you getting that van of yours to get that towing is a mystery to me I fetched a small 16'6 Kingcat in PE last month and was getting around 5km to lt

[dugong]

Great report and bloody well done on the fish!!

[manamarak]

Lekker Sheldon, well done!