We got off to an early launch at 05h00 and mad our way out the Durban harbour mouth and headed NE until around 35m depth. It was a lovely morning with a red sunrise and not too much wind which was blowing in a NE direction and the water surface temperature averaged around 22 deg. C with some warmer spots up to 23.5 deg. C and cooler spots down to 19 deg. C. The swell was around 1.5m spaced at around 8 sec.
We started here with Yozuri's collecting some Mackerel for live bait, but they were scarce and we only caught 5 in amongst plenty sand soldiers. Whilst collecting the live bait we noticed chases around the area and the light 10lb spinning tackle had the Yozuri's replaced with small jerk baits and we had great sport catching some nice sized Eastern Little Tuna's and Sarda Sarda. On this light tackle it was really great fun and the Eastern Little Tuna's which were around 3Kg really gave the reels a good work out.
Sadly I hooked into something big which I lost after my Crucial 7.2 MH tip snapped. This was my favourite, favourite of all my rods and now will retire as a spare 7.0 rod once I replace it. I am very sad as I have fished this rod the last 3 yrs and caught many a good fish on it including my PB Bass, and a 12Kg Dorado, and I will sadly miss the memories attached to this rod which was affectionately called "Louie". Yes I am a crazy guy who names his rods, and I even speak to them when I am rigging them up. Call me MAD if you like, but I am passionate about what I do.
I will sadly miss Louie, but will hold the good memories we had together dear.
(Anyone care to donate me a Crucial 7.2MH Spinning rod, it would really help me out, and I would take great care of it)
As the day progressed the NE picked up considerably and the swell got up to 2.5m at around 4 seconds and it was very choppy, the further out we went the worse it got. None the less I rigged up 2 rods to target Couta (King Mackerel) with our live baits and did a slow troll along the 30m depth to 60m depth heading NE, this is the first time I have specifically targeted Couta this season and we saw no Couta but a Dorado did strike 1 of our live baits, and the greedy bugger went and took our second live bait aswell during the fight and so know we had 1 Dorado on 2 rods and he caused one huge tangle and eventually the lines rubbed through each other and we lost him by the boat. This is not the 1st time I have had Dorado take more than one bait at a time and cause a huge mess.
After that I set 6 rods up with Kona's and Rapala X-Raps and we trolled them at around 5knots as I was not able to go any faster into that mean swell and we continued NE until 110m depth and then changed our heading to south and continued until around 150m depth. I pulled past some fads along the way, but nothing and then I turned SW heading back to Durban and pulled 2 live baits again until around 80m with no result.
We then packed up the rods and headed in towards shore until we reached some pinnacles in 25-35m of water were we had a go at Vertical Jigging which almost immediately produced us a Sarda Sarda from the bottom and he gave a splendid fight for his size darting all around the boat when we got him up. After that the fun started and we got some huge Eastern Little Tuna's which made a rewarding end to a tough day out at sea, these fish really put up a good fight and I rate them as the hardest fighting fish in terms of fight/weight ratio.
We eventually got back to the slipway at around 17h00 which made our trip a total of 10hrs in some pretty rough waters and we were all tired, stiff and hungry.
