We got off to a late start this morning and only got going at around 06h00 eventually. There was a moderate NE wind blowing and the water surface temperature averaged around 22 deg. C with some spots being as low as 19 deg. C and some as high as 24.5 deg. C. It was an extremely hot day.
Our plan was to go for a short morning session with the hope of getting some Queen Mackerel (Natal Snoek) on light tackle, and so we headed north to Umgeni Mouth and trolled 3 strip baits. The sea was not nice even though the swell was small, it was uneven, irregular and very "bumpy", which makes it very difficult to keep the boat on a straight course. We did not seem to find any Queen Mackerel and it seemed non of the other boats around did either as they all left the area, we caught a lot of shad on the strip baits and some were decent sizes and so we put some in the live well for use later on. At Virginia I turned the boat around and started heading to Reef no.1 and we changed the strip baits and put 2 shad out as live bait in the hope of finding an early season King Mackerel (Couta), still on the very light tackle (Elbe 5'6" Ski Pro with Abu Garcia 6500 C4 and 15lb Big Game)
It was not long before the one reel went and a little Black Tip Shark was landed, he was very small (Cute) but still put up a good fight and made for good sport, after we released him we then put another shad out and it was not very long before we hooked up a nice size Hammer Head Shark and after about 45 min on the light tackle we got it to the boat but it was too big to bring onto the boat so we brought it alongside and cut him loose. After that we hooked up 2 much bigger Sharks too strong for our tackle and eventually got bitten off.
When we arrived at the no. 1 buoy on the outskirts of the no. 1 reef we several boats there and observed some chases and we managed to hook up 1 Dorado and 3 Sarda Sarda. For me the Dorado was disappointing as even on the light tackle he did not give a fight at all, he never jumped once and he was pale almost white with non of the brilliant colours that usually is associated with this species, I did not want him for the pot as he just did not seem right and so he joined the Sarda Sarda back in the Ocean.
We had now run out of the live Shad that we had kept and so changed over to lures put the out riggers down and ran 6 lines over reef no. 1 heading south and got nothing there. One of the crew was skippering the boat whilst I sat up front had some lunch and then watched the water in front of the boat hanging my head over the bow and observed all the jelly fish, blue bottles and other organisms, I find this a great way to relax as you only hear the water parting by the bow and for a few minutes I rested my eyes.
Once we had passed the port entrance at around 30m depth I took over the controls again and then noted that the weather had changed and the wind was gone and the seas were flat, the water here was also dirty as we headed towards Garvey beach where we going to turn and then head back to port along the back line which is one of my favourite fishing spots even though we never even saw a fish let alone catch one and as we got passed the old whaling station the seas were rough again and the wind was blowing hard.
Then it hit me, there was a distinct line from about 500m south of the south pier heading out in a east north east direction, on the north side there was a heavy NE wind and choppy seas with a 5ft swell at 6 seconds, and on the other side there was virtually no wind and the seas were flat with a 3ft swell at around 10 seconds. I have spent 1000's of hours at sea over many years in many different conditions good and bad some even scary, but I have never witnessed something like this before. Strange, very Strange.
We got back to port at around 15h00
