With Fat Girls motor now reconditioned, we had three 5hr charters booked for this weekend, 2 for Friday and one for Saturday. It was great to be back on the water and Fat Girl ran well.
It was interesting to see how the water temperature dropped over these 3 trips with Saturday morning giving us readings from 22deg.C up to 23.5deg.C and the afternoon giving us 20deg.C to 21deg.C, by Sunday the readings where from 17deg.C to 21deg.C and we even found a small current with 12.3 deg.C out deeper. With this cold front looming and the water temp dropping I think we will see sardines very soon.
Friday morning gave us a light SW wind and flat seas, whilst the afternoon gave use glass seas and a ultra light SE wind, Sunday was a moderate NW breeze with flat seas, but as the morning progressed the swells were getting larger and larger. The water was crystal clear once we passed the 20m depth range. Sunday was incredibly cold. Brrrrrrrrr.
Over the trips we had the pleasure to see many humpback whales, and on Saturday morning they were breaching giving us an awesome display, we also saw dolphins and came across a huge pod of 400 or so on Sunday, amongst them was some rather large Yellowfin Tuna in the 20Kg range, tried as we did there was no success to catch them, it was awesome to watch the going airborne.
The fishing was tough and we got several Kawakawa in the 4Kg range, and some nice Yellowfin Tuna in the 5kg range. Bottom fishing was not so easy and we only got smaller fish, I think the current was too strong as we struggled to keep our lines down.
I got some nice sunrise and sunset shots, an all my guests were happy and had some fish to take home, last night I had Yellowfin Tuna on the braai and it was delicious.
