I went out with a father and his young son off Durban. We launched at 05h00 from Durban harbour and trolled light tackle along the back line. The water surface temperature was averaging around 22 deg. C (still cold) and the day started with a moderate NE breeze, the swells were around 1.2m (4ft)
I was hoping for some more king fish but never got any, we kept hooking up Needle Scaled Queen Fish (Salad Fish) and so I went slightly deeper but there was so much grass and debris in the water and the lures were continuously fouling. Whilst near the back line we saw 2 pods of Dolphins, 1 pod with about 12 Dolphins and the other with about 8.
I decided to go out deeper and so we went to around 80-90m (263-296ft) depth and trolled over the old wrecks still with the light tackle, although the wind had settled down nicely I noticed a complete absence of birds. We then started getting Eastern Little Tuna all in the 2-2.5Kg (4.4-5.5lb) weight and even got 1 double hook up. Mostly we were just getting 1 at a time; these fish are great fun and give a good fight on light tackle. We also saw some Whales swimming out there and a Logger Head Turtle.
Then I started heading North and as we came into around 60m (197ft) depth on our way to a reef all 6 lines started screaming, and there was only 3 of us on the boat we could only fight 3 fish. I tightened the drags on the other rods and kept the boat moving forward. After we landed the 3, we then picked up the other rods and brought in another 2 fish and 1 rod had lost its catch. This was great fun and after some good fish fighting we had landed 5 fish.
One of the Eastern Little Tuna that we hooked up had a snake fall out of its mouth when it regurgitated and I have never seen this before. All of the snake's pigmentation was gone from being in the fishes belly and it was white.
We then did some fishing on the reefs and pinnacles in around 45m (148ft) still with the light tackle where we got some Rockod, Slinger and Trigger Fish. We also were treated to a fantastic display of 2 Whales breaching.
Then the wind shifted to a SW and started picking up and so we headed back at around 13h30.
