Inhaca bitter sweet

[Prego]

Recently a few old mates told me they where doing a weeks trip to inhaca and told me they had a position open & I jumped at the oppurtunity. A few weeks later and we were on our way.
We crossed the border with out hassle and met a former UA member in Maputo where we went through all the legal requirements to get the boat on the water. We then made our way to Clube Maritimo where we put my mate Paul's boat into salt water for the first time since he has owned it. We made our way across to Inhaca which takes approximately an hour to cross on arrival we prepped our tackle for our first big day & we really had no idea what was in store for us.

[Prego]

Next morning we were up bright & early and on our way. I usually fish between  the 9-60m mark, and my two mates on the boat come from a R&S backround so when any sight of land was dissapearing as we ventured north east off Inhaca it got a little daunting . So we arrived at our mark and had decided that the 1st few strikes was for the owner of the boat. Unfortuantely for him it was skip jack after skip jack.

[Prego]

We then decided to do some jigging which is something completely new to any of us. Man was this hard work. Here we learned the hard way as we got hook ups but nothing to show for  except damaged leaders and lost jigs. There are really some big nunu's down there that we just could not get up to the boat. Only one we managed to get to the boat was this sample.

[Prego]

Whilst jigging I had 2 trap sticks out and literally as I said "man I am surprised we have had no takers on the trap sticks" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Boy was I in for some punishment, we followed whatever was down below for 40min this was the biggest battle i have ever had before and really hard but awesome fun.

[Prego]

As you can see I was cooking and my mates thought it would be fun to cool me down with buckets of water . Unfortuantely after 40 min 1 of the guys on board began to get impatient & procedeed to hand line the fish & needless to say as the silver shinning figure of this monster came in to view the knots pulled. .

The boat went very quiet for a while, we eventually pulled our self together and decided to pull some lures.

[Prego]

5 minutes in and we had a double strike Paul picked up the 50 and Clyde the TLD unfortunately for Clyde he picked up the rod with a sample YFT on and he was allowed to go back to grow another year Paul on the other had had a awesome fight with his YFT, & even had to fight this guy seated as it nearly pulled him into the drink

[Prego]

Clyde releasing his sample.

[Prego]

Paul with his 1st YFT gutted and bled ready for our 1st taste of fresh Sashimi mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummy.

[Prego]

At this point we had seen some Marlin jumping so we quickly change to some bigger lures but after an hour or so we had no takers and changed back to some smaller lures & this when the fun began, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz on 3 reels it was a 1st for me and man I was like a kid in a candy store. Dolly's jumping every where. This was our reward and we all had a chance to have some fun.

[Prego]

And another.

[Prego]

We then decided to try and sight cast to the Dolly's with our spinning kit, they would follow our lures but no hook ups. We began trolling again but decided to put a spinning rod( Kingfisher Posedein popping rod with a Speros 14000) out in the shot gun position with a williamson popper.
What happen next none of us onboard could never dream of. We made a pass at a stricken ship at the bow we saw Dollies going towards our lures. You can guess what happened next but you are wrong as were we. Yes it took the popper rod but it was no Dolly.

[Prego]

If you thought kids could make a noise you should of heard 4 grown men scream for joy. We were like school kids. This battle went on for nearly a hour on this poor Spheros 14000. This were the battle started.

[Prego]

This is were we ended up, and a great pic of the Spheros screaming.

[Prego]

A few more action pics, sorry but I have no clue how to add more that one pic to a post.

[Prego]

Paul fighting his Marlin jigging style 

[Prego]

and another

[Prego]

We eventually grabbed the leader all hand on and celebrated with school girl screams again and high 5's & hand shakes all round. We had a look at our fuel situation and decided it was low & although the fish were going mad we would now return to Inhaca after our first super SWEET day.
This is where the bitter came in. About 8 km's from Inhaca our left motor back fired and stopped performing. We putted back on one motor. This turned our sweet day on into "bitter sweet day one & basically fishing trip"

[REEFMAN]

A few more action pics, sorry but I have no clue how to add more that one pic to a post.

Under additional options, where you post your first pic, there is a title "more attachments" - after you've added your first pic, just click the more attachments and add the next one...

[Prego]

After 2 days of pushing spanners and swoping every part possible from left to right motor we could not find the problem. At this point our former UA member and recently met friend decided that he would return to Maputo and bring his Ski Vee for me and my 2 mates to carry on doing what we came to Inhaca for Fishing. He told to be on the beach at 4.30am the next morning. This was hard to believe has we had just met our new friend 3 days prior. Truth be told at 4.30am he arrived with his Ski Vee. He stayed behind as he said 4 was to many on his rig and he returned to Maputo. We left on his boat. We eventually made it out to our desired location, after a very bumpy and wet ride. When we got there we set six lines out and not even 2 minutes later zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Four reels start singing we all dive for a rod and we quickly bring in the closest ones with bonnies on then I quickly geb the 50 and its feels heavy I bring in a monster dolly. While we wre all still fighting fish a 5th reel goes off while drifting, yip we left our popper on the shotgun again but this time it was a dolly(damn no stick nose ) My PB Dolly.

[Prego]

After sorting all the tangles we trolled a little more but no luck, we then sounded the reef or wreck and found some monster showing we tried everything to get our jigs and bait down but the current was having none of it & we had not loaded our big box of heavy sinkers after trying desperately for about an hour the fish started raising towards the boat and we could see then at about 10m's. Clyde goes vas & had forgotten to loosen his drag which nearly put him in the drink. After a while the hooks pulled and we realise we had put the hooks on the wrong way.

The wind started picking up & we knew that a south was coming up for the next 2 days and decided to head back to Inhaca.

The next day we spent relaxing and trying to get our jigs right, and obviously getting into the local brew.

The following day the south was still up and we decided to do some fishing from the side. With only one fish to show for our efforts