Well I went and got some spearfishing gear off a mate. The only thing I need is a new set of rubbers on the gun and a weight belt.
We had a cyclone move past which stirred the seas up for a couple weeks. That moved off and yesterday was looking ok for a fish. I took one of my drillers out and we started on the banks. It didn’t take long for the redhead diver to go off and Luke brought a nice Spanish to the boat.
A few minutes later we had a double go off. Nolan beat Quigley to the boat and I sunk the gaff on a 15kg wahoo
Luke was holding his wahoo just off the boat while I was gaffing Nolan’s and a third one rolled in and hit the lure between Lukes rod tip and fish cutting his loose.
We got back into it and shortly later he redeemed himself on another 15kg hoo
With the kill tank full I pointed the bow east and went chasing bills. We hadn’t trolled a mile when the long rigger fired and I saw a 60-70kg black dancing behind the boat. I passed it off to Luke and Nolan and I cleared gear. Within a minute or so the hook came out and we started trolling again.
Fast forward to a few hours of boredom we went through all our old haunts and back without a strike. Luke wanted to try the banks again so we popped in and just as we started climbing the first section of reef the shotgun went off. Nolan brought another wahoo to the boat the same size as the first ones. Being as the kill tank was in good shape we released it at the boat.
We made it onto the banks and had a double go down, one hooked up and Luke pulled a little 4-5kg yellowfin to us. There was no chance of me releasing that one so I made room for it amongst the fish and ice in the kill tank.
We then cut out to the fad where Nolan wanted to break in his new tld. So I put “pinky” on and set it back about 6m behind the boat in the prop wash. Pinky is a little jet head that’s caught more mahi for my boat then all the rest of my lures combined. Anyway we made a pass and saw a massive shark. It looked like a white to me but I wasn’t getting in the water to ID it. The thing was at least 4 meters long and just under the surface. Absolutely massive fish that made me rethink spear fishing and at the exact same place we hopped in last time. Anyway, we turned around and made another pass and Nolan hooked up, christening his new reel
When I gutted the mahi I saw a little sailfish in his belly. There was a little full length sail along its back but it would pull apart every time I tried to stand it up. You’ll just have to trust it’s a sail
With that we pulled the pin and started home. Along the way we ran into birds working some bait and I decided to try and catch some. Keep in mind that making bait is supposed to be where every blue water fisherman starts his morning. We suck at catching slimies so we don’t try. We suck because we seem to drop on the wrong bait schools and catch junk. This time we dropped and immediately started pulling strings of slimies into the boat. We took a few for future dead baits and will try to make bait on future trips in the morning so we can slow troll them both off the electric Scottie’s and on surface. We might even make a habit of flying them under the kite, time will tell.
Once the gear was packed up we tried a platter of sashimi and compared yellowfin, Spanish, wahoo and mahi to each other. We all had different opinions of how to rank them but it was nice to try them all at the same time.