We got out for another trip. Nolan had to stay home for school and he tried several different arguments to talk me into taking him. The “crew” consisted of Rosi and a guy who works for me “Tim”. Tim has never caught anything bigger then a bream, so approx 1.5kg.
We hit the banks at dawn and put the spread out. We trolled over bait and fish without so much as a nibble. These are from a little later but the sounder looked like this all the time.
We then cut north toward the top of the banks. While trolling across no man’s land where we never catch anything and the long rigger had a little tuna trying to hook himself on it. Rosie took the rod and dropped it back, cranked it towards himself and attempted to coax a strike without any success. He then dropped it back to put it back in its position when something picked it up and took off with it. He set the drag and handed it to Tim. Soon a billfish was jumping behind the boat and we cleared the lines. A few seconds in we saw it was a sail.
Within a minute or two he was asking for the belt. Lol, Rosie and I had a good chuckle cause we rarely wear it on anything less then a hour long fight.
Ten minutes later Rosie put the worst tag shot into him and Tim had landed his first billfish.
We worked that area and couldn’t find another sail. We then continued up to the top of the banks and worked the area without a strike.
Back south to the middle of the banks where we saw a sizeable black jumping out of the water chasing bait. We trolled the area without a strike.
We worked the banks for another hour or so before the shotgun fired. Rosie had the rod and it seemed to be a wahoo. It peeled a couple hundred meters of line at warp speed then fought him staying off the side of the boat. The bend in the rod and amount of fight was similar to the one porter caught last week, maybe a bit harder. About ten meters off the boat it gave a series of head shakes and the hook pulled.
We trolled out to the fad where we hooked up a small mahi on the first pass. We then pulled the gear because Tim had brought his spear fishing gear.
He hopped in the water and swam around for about forty seconds before shooting a mahi.
I then hopped in to try myself. Wow, what a ton of fish there. The amount of stuff visible under the water was unreal. I swam around after the mahi for about twenty minutes. They seemed to stay just out of reach. I don’t know how far away cause it was very hard to judge distance but I would say 3m away from me. Eventually I took a punt and fired at one. The spear hit the end of the line about 2’ from the fish. I swam back to the boat and decided to go fishing instead of wasting more time swimming around but I suspect I’ll be buying spear fishing gear now.
We continued to troll out to the subsurface fads and back without a strike. We came back to the banks late in the arvo, worked them hard without a sniff and then trolled in toward land. I eventually relented and started pulling gear. I brought six of the lures in and tidied up the outriggers. I then reached up for the shotgun to bring in the last line and it went off. It was perfect timing and seemed like it was meant to be. I held it for a second and it didn’t feel like much of a fish but I told Tim to take it. He told me to catch it, I then told him I didn’t need to catch a fish, take the rod. That prob took 10 seconds and then the fish was gone. I cranked it in and the hook was bit off at the crimp.
That’s fishing right. Overall good day with some good guys and probably going to have to take up another hobby.