The end of the year has come and this was to be my final fishing experience for 2009.
We launched at 07h00 for a 5hr trip off Durban, we had not even got out the harbour mouth when one of the guys started getting sea sick.
I was not the best of sea conditions, but it was not that bad either. We had a 5 second short period swell of around 2.1m (5ft), the bad thing was that the swell was coming from 2 directions and so made the ride very bumpy.
I wanted to do a troll along the backline but the swell was standing up to much and I decided the risk was to high and so headed for deeper waters and trolled along the 20-30m contour. By this time 3 of my 4 guests were really sea sick and hanging over the side of the boat when 2 of the reels ran, but this was not to be as the guys were too weak to fight the fish and they slack lined them and lost them. I was trolling 3 strip baits deep and I am sure it was King Mackerel (Couta).
After this we went to reef no. 1 and whilst 3 guys lay down the 1 guy fished on the bottom where we got Slinger, Rockod and a few other species. I then cut a half fillet from a 3Kg Bonnie and put it on inside out on as a drift bait.
It was not very long before the reel started running and 200m of line was taken, by the take I am sure it was a shark, we then followed it for around an hour and a half over 2 Nautical Miles when we eventually got it in front of the boat, it was a Hammer Head Shark of over 4m long, estimated at well over 200Kg (450lbs) and when I reached over and grabbed the leader it saw me and took off never to be seen again, the light tackle with 19lb line was just not strong enough for this beast.
By this time the other guys had had enough and wanted to go in and so this was the end of my final trip for the year.
