On Thursday I had the pleasure of taking a young couple, Michelle and Ronaldo, out for a day’s fishing.
Michelle had chartered me as a surprise gift for Ronaldo, as it has been a dream of his to go Deep Sea Fishing. So to start off the day we launched at 6:00am and headed out to the deep to hunt for some
,
and
. Weather was great with a light SW and small swells; water temp started off at 25.5 deg. and maxed out at 27.8 deg. Water was fairly clean in the shallower water and the deep was crystal clear. It was not long after dropping the lines that we had our first strike by a big Bull
. Sadly though the line parted shortly after the strike and we had to sit back and watch his awesome display of aerial acrobatics in the knowledge that he was not going to be caught today
After arming the rod with a new leader and lure we carried on our way to some deeper and warmer waters. As we hit the marks we had a good strong pull…it was a Black
! We saw him jump and then the line went slack... a short while later we had another strike…this one we didn’t see but it was very typical of a Black
strike and this happened about 4 times before we had a short hookup…
After leaving the deep we headed to the shallow waters to look for some Bottom Fish. Trawling on the way we managed to pick up a Queen
of about 6kg. Just as we were about to slow down to pull in the trawling gear we had another pull, this time from a nice sized Striped
- while she was running and jumping we had what I thought was another strike on our shot gun line, but sadly it looked like the Stripey had crossed the lines and we got burnt off
….after this we packed up the game rods, but we spotted a few Black Tip
circling under the boat (Queue dramatic Jaws music…Da Dum…Da Dum...!) So we tossed a few Sardines over board to get them to come to the surface so that Ronaldo and Michelle could get a good look at them, they could not believe that the Sharks would get so close to the boat! After a couple of “oooh’s” and “aaaw’s” we got under way to my marks for some Bottom Fishing. As we were reeling up after our first down, I noticed that something was chasing the baits…
...so I quickly unclipped the bottom traces and clipped on my pitch-bait traces with a Sardine and drifted them just off the boat. We could see about 5
in and around the boat and it was not long before we had our fist hook up…a Bull
of about 8kg. With 3 lines drifting we got our 3
rd one on, this was a small Queen, about 7kg. Then Michelle decided she wanted in on this action, as now Ronaldo had caught 3 Dorries! ... So we drifted our last 2 Sardines and she got her hook up...but this was a big Bull...as we got him close to the boat he took off; and following just behind him was a big Bull
. What a rush seeing that Shark shoot out from under the boat!!! I was just expecting to see a pool of blood but with a miraculous display of aerial acrobatics the Dorrie jumped clear out the water evading the
at the last minute! We managed to quickly fight him back to the leader which I then grabbed and then pulled him onto the boat, just in the nick of time, as the
attacked again just missing the
by mere millimeters. We all stood there in awe of what we had just witnessed! I have had my fair share of taxed fish but never have I escaped the Tax Man from this close. I was soaked by the splashing and thrashing of tails...Man it was exciting! And the Bull tipped the scales at 20kg tax free!
Thank you to my clients for making this such an exciting and memorable trip! Was great to have you aboard!
