We launched from Durban Harbour at 05h00, it was a super day with virtually no wind and swells of less than a meter with a long interval. The water surface temperature was warm at 25 deg. C.
We started out collecting live bait on Yozuri's and the bait fish were wild and we filled up our live well in a short time. We even caught a Sarda Sarda of around 1.5Kg (3.3lbs).
We then headed SE till 250m and then turned North trolling lures, since nothing had even looked at our lures we put out 2 live baits and did a slow troll from 210m towards the 150m mark were we got a hit but lost it. Somehow the live well pump got switched on and pumped all the water out, and we only had one remaining fish that was live which we rigged and swam out. These 2 live baits yielded us to small Dorado of around 2.5-3Kg (5.5-6.6lbs) at the 180m mark.
With no more live bait we decided to troll smaller lure as the larger ones had produced nothing and much later on in the afternoon we hooked up another small Dorado of similar size on a Rapala X-Rap Splash Bait.
There was a huge amount of flying fish around from 2.5-5cm (1-2") from the 150m depth and as far out as we had gone for the day, this is a very positive sign. We also saw a whale which had its tail out the water for as long as we could see it.
An interesting thing happened when we were trolling at around 200m depth; a little Bird, smaller than a Sparrow with Finch like features came flying along and perched on one of the out-riggers for about 5 minutes and hitched a ride before it flew off. This is the first time something like this has happened to me. I also observed many large Dragon Flies past the 180m contour. There were also many Dolphins around.
Sorry no pics, Camera battery was flat, only got the Dolphins in 1 shot.
