Yesterday was looking good for a trip and the oldest boy decided he had to get out there before the end of the season. Due to him getting sea sick he’s never been out there and never caught most of the fish we catch out there. He will go reef fishing when it’s calm but even then he usually suffers. I gave him a sea legs pill and assumed he would be ok.
I lined rosi up and we started at the 10 mile fad to look for bait. The little man wanted to troll pinky past the fad which he did and immediately hooked a little mahi. It was only about 70cm so I unhooked it and threw it back to grow a bit.
We couldn’t find bait so we punched another ten miles out and stopped approx 2 miles short of the banks to get everything set. Rosi was driving and I put a nine line spread out. We made it about a mile when the long rigger fired, I handed it to Pierce and started clearing the spread. It was a baby but a good place to cut his teeth and he handled it without to many problems. Not as polished as his little brother but he brought it to the boat and kicked the day off.
We did a lap or two in that area then continued up to the reef. There was one other boat on top of the banks bottom fishing. He was about 150 meters south of me as I cut east across the top. Rosi and I noticed he was looking to move and had our eye on him. He then takes off on plane heading north and cut about 40m behind my transom. As he was getting close I was out the back gesturing but as he cut across my lines I fully lost it. He heard me too and got more then an ear full but it was to late. I’m not sure how you can be so stupid to not notice a boat with outriggers and nine lines hanging out the back travelling at 6.5 knots. I was a bit concerned with a grand worth of lures at the mercy of his prop. He only managed to pick up two lines of which one wasn’t cut and then the shotgun which I could feel around his prop. He pulled it for a ways then it broke off on the mono with perhaps 30m of line and a lure that didn’t come back. The guy kept running, probably because he didn’t know enough to stop and get the line off his prop or maybe because he didn’t want any more abuse from me. ~maybe it took his lower unit seals out for him.
We fixed some carnage, put one rod out of service and remembered why I bring ten trolling rigs and got back to fishing. The banks were fairly devoid of hungry fish. I could see them on the sounder but they didn’t want to play the game. Naturally I blamed the new moon. We did a few laps and eventually the shotgun fired. Rosi brought us a Spanish for the kill tank but we didn’t stop and get any pictures. This is the closest I can find in a video that Nolan got
With the food situation settled we started out to the 100m line where we heard there was lots of bait. When we got there we found lots of bait. Naturally, being short of live baits I dropped a bait jig to get some of these slimies. Toad fish. I pulled up stringers of toad fish. We were in disbelief so we stopped over half a doz schools and all we caught were toad fish. We then understood why we were seeing lots of bait but marking zero marlin on them.
We trolled north and east doing a big lap, touching 200m of depth and dropping back to the banks in the early afternoon after a long day of not catching anything. On the way it was good to have both of my sidekicks with me. The other dads will know what I mean
Once back on the reef we saw a bust up of bait so trolled through it and hooked up on three rainbow runners of approx 8-10kg.
We got away from them and kept at it, we saw some wolf herring busting up and got into them with no strikes. Wolf herring aren’t supposed to be this far south but make an A grade Spanish/wahoo bait. They must have found a warm current to get this far down
Talking about these fellas
As we trolled through where the wolf herring were I could see wahoo just under the surface. Tons of them but they must have been fixated on the herring because they wouldn’t touch our lures.
The sounder was alive with fish and bait but despite our best efforts all we could find were a couple more rainbow runners.
At one point we saw some bait busting up and I ripped through it. The rigger fired and Rosi grabbed it. Then the shotgun fired and rosi grabbed that too, probably to hand to one of the boys. Regardless he reached up and cleared the rod holder with the rod then the drag carried the rod out of his hands and behind the boat into the water. I saw it in slow motion with the rod never actually in his hand, just lifted up and flying behind the boat only to disappear into the water. There was a moment of silence then he said a few choice words. Another line on the other side of the boat hooked up and pierce jumped on that one. I told Nolan to start pulling lines in because maybe one of them had hooked the missing rod. Three of us cleared lines but our missing rod wasn’t to be seen. Pierce was on his fish and it looked like a good mahi the one time I saw it behind the boat. Then he dropped it but was still fighting something. He brought up a piece of mono attached to his hook. We couldn’t believe it. Rosi started hand lining it in and retrieved the missing tiagra saving himself from having to buy me another one.
We trolled another three miles south to try one last spot. We got down there to find some cooler green water and cut our first lap picking up a striped tuna. That went back where it came from. Next up was a strike on the shotgun and a little black marlin dancing out the back. Rosi brought it in and I got a tag into it. When the tag hit him it jumped a few times and threw the hook. That wasn’t a problem so we redeployed and continued to cut laps.
Next was a vicious strike on the red headed diver on the short corner. Pierce grabbed it and a few seconds later the shotgun fired. I handed the shotgun to Nolan (without throwing the rod in the water) and called them for wahoo. Being as Pierce’s fish started 10m behind the boat and Nolan’s was 100m back there was almost a tie at the boat with pierce just winning the race. I put the gaff into it and got it into the boat. Nolan’s fish was the same size and I didn’t see the use in taking that much meat. We flicked the second one off the hook at the side of the boat and took two pictures with the first fish.
I didn’t bother to weigh it but I know it’s bigger then the 16kg fish we were catching last time.
With a pair of tags planted and the kill tank looking good we decided it best to pull the pin and head in. Coming into winter the days are getting shorter and I don’t like cleaning the boat in the dark. All up it was a great day for the eldest and he cut his teeth on a few of our palegics. As always, a few mishaps and hard to believe tragedies along the way.