Cold Green Xtreme Dorado.
Offshore Fishing Report – Durban – 15th November 2018
We got going at 04h30 and to my dismay as I left port I saw the water temperature was 18deg C and it was green, I was hoping that deeper out maybe we could find warmer blue water but this did not happen and even up to 400m it was green and cold, the best water we found was 21.3deg on the 100-200m so we ran North with this. The sea was not settled and swells all over the show with strong 30 knot winds out in the deep but much calmer on the inside so the 100-200m line was the best choice for the day but I was not optimistic. I decided on a mixed spread of bullets, konas and some of the new Rapala Xtreme’s which I have been testing and like very much and ran faster than usual at 9-10 knots to try cover as much ground as possible.
It turned out to be an interesting day with what we would call impossible conditions for producing fish and first up was a bunch of Eastern Little Tuna on 165m which is very odd as normally we never get these deeper than 50m and usually the 165m is Oceanic Bonito (Skipjack) territory. They were eating on the Rapala Extremes. After this I came back in to about 110m and we hooked up a nice Yellowfin Tuna and this was followed by another one, both on the Rapala Extreme’s. I moved out a bit deeper to about 190m and again the Rapala Extreme produced and we landed a small Dorado. The water was really green and as I went further North I tried the 80-90m and running at about 12knots with the swell and we had a triple hook up on Rapala Xtreme’s and landed 2 very nice Dorado, time was out and so we brought in the lines and ran back to port. The bullets and konas and not been touched and all fish came out on the Rapala Xtreme’s and I think had we not put these out we would have had a blank for the day, they really awesome as even at 12 knots running with the swell and surging up to 15 knots they run true, and because we had a number of lures out we had run them very close off the corners about 7m from the transom and all the fish came right in there so a great tactic for future days with cold green water.
