I lined up a trip for today. The recent reports had some fish around and the season should be in full swing. My sister is still here so she said she was coming with us, along with Nolan and porter. Winds were for 10-15 knot and forecasted high around 28. I told porter to be here for 03:00.
I woke up at 02:00 to rain on the roof. So I did the logical thing and thought my ears must be playing up. Lol… I went downstairs and looked outside and it was hammering down. So I checked the forecast and to say it had changed would be an understatement. I texted porter and he said he was still keen so I started loading the boat. My sister came down and said she was going to pass. The rain was a deal breaker and to make matters worse they were forecasting 25 knot winds by the afternoon.
So porter and Nolan and I hit the water and it was pretty sporting. There was large ground swell and it was very hard to see with the rain pelting me in the eyes. We took it slow and by dawn we were only 10 miles offshore near the first fad. I suggested we just drop the spread and troll out the last 10 miles cause we could only punch into it at 15 knots beating ourselves to pieces or we could troll at 7-8 knots and might catch a fish.
So we deployed a spread and I told Nolan to have his nap. Within five minutes the shotgun went off and I brought in a micro mahi. I flipped it off the hook and started to drop the lure back into position. As I was dropping it back the line took off and I set the drag. It screamed off and I called it for a wahoo or Spanish. A few minutes later a nice hoo came over the side on the end of the gaff.
I noticed right away it was the stinger hook who caught that fish
We trolled again and a few minutes later another line took off. Porter jumped on it and a little black started jumping. I was clearing gear and when I grabbed the shotgun it too was tight. We had a double. I yelled at Nolan to wake up and handed it off to him. They manage to bring both babies in within a few minutes to be tagged. Nolan’s threw the hook shortly after while we were handling porters which suited us just fine as it’s the tag that counts. For some reason porter hauled his out of the water.
It wasn’t much longer and we had another marlin strike the shotgun. I handled that one and porter sunk the tag.
He had these nasty parasites growing all over his back. (The things that look like weeds)
We then trolled around getting strike after strike and fish after fish. It was red hot. For memorable fish I was on a mahi that was the biggest I’ve ever seen. That’s not saying much because we don’t get them much over 10kg but this one was at least 20kg. It was a hog for these waters. Then the 38lb single strand wire stinger broke and I lost him. Lesson learned, the stinger gets replaced after every fish, not when it looks bad.
We finally got to the banks and found a slick of spawn and a temp break with some cold (24.5) deg water. It was mayhem. First up was a bust up that materialised right behind the boat. Lines started to go down and five of the seven were hit. We landed all five and they were rainbow runners between 6-12kg. I had never seen one before and now we couldn’t get away from them. Seemed wherever we went they found us and between them and the mac tuna we had ~20-25 fish landed within the next hour or two. Eventually I was to tired to keep playing with them and told porter we had to look somewhere else. We didn’t make it far and porter picked up a good Spanish
Few minutes later I got one too
The rules changed this month so now it’s one Spanish over 75cm per person or two per boat. Last month it was 3 per person over 75cm. Anyway we kept trolling and had four lures cut off in a row while we were fighting a fish. What happens is the lure slides up the leader and if it gets behind a Spanish or wahoo another toothy meat missile will strike the lure and cut the leader. That was getting expensive so we trolled deeper to look for marlin. We trolled about 8 miles with only a couple of mahi to show and the wind picked up in a big way. I made the call to pull the gear and run in to the 18 mile.
We trolled the 18 mile and porter had a wahoo hit then lost it after a blistering run. A couple minutes later another one hit the short corner and cut the hook off.
We trolled back past the fad and didn’t see anything worth fishing. The seas were sloppy and confused so we pulled the gear and ran home.
Overall it was a great success. I more then lost count but it was an easy 40+ fish day. We killed two rainbow runners to see how they tasted. Along with a mahi, two Spanish and the hoo. Fridge looks good and if the weather settles down there’s plenty of time to go fishing again this break
The rainbow runner
