About the Marlin, the Hammerhead and 7 Tuna
Marlin Fishing Report – Durban – 10 April 2019
Today the Blue Water Charters team and some friends went out for a team building fishing trip, the plan was to go deep a get a Marlin or for 2nd prize a good tuna. Everything looked right for today and so we decided to go and at 04h50 we left Wilson’s Wharf on Fat Girl and made our way out the harbour and set course for the continental shelf as the SST charts showed warm waters out there as closer in it has been very quiet of late. As we went out we found warm blue water on the inside, but once we crossed the Agulhas the water got colder and greener. In this area we came across a pod of Minke Whales, perhaps 9-10 of them and we came across the remains of what looked like Humboldt Squid, it was here that we discovered that the SST charts were incorrect for the day, none the less we plodded on out to the deep when I noticed a clear line near the drop off in the deep waters and so changed course and headed out towards this line which turned out to be about 1 km wide with a difference of 2 degrees in SST on either side and so I started working this as we found birds, flying fish ( 1 which landed on the bow of the boat, very cute and we put it back in the water), pods of dolphins, some small jumping Bonito and other life in this water. By this time we were this far out we had already spent several hours on the water with no fish and everyone was hungry so we started our braai and got the sausages cooking (Thanks Adam), as we all started to eat I made a comment that when we all have our food in our hands and are in the middle of eating we will get a hook up. As things go it happened exactly like that with a triple hook up with some decent size Yellowfin Tuna and everyone’s hands were full and so with stuffed mouths we managed to land 2 of the 3 with one coming off. We set the spread again and continued working the line and it was not long and we had a full strike with 7 rods going, 1 Tuna came off and one line got rubbed in the entanglement and parted and we landed 5 of them. So after 8 years I realised that today was the first time I had fought a fish from my own fighting chair and it was a decent 30kg Yellowfin Tuna. Of the 7 Tuna landed the smallest was 22kg and the largest was 30kg making the hatch full. 3 of these buss Tuna were taken on the new Rapala Xtreme’s that we have been testing and running. The deck was cleaned and spread reset and I carried on working the line. The story gets an interesting twist at this stage because we noticed a Greater Hammerhead shark ahead of the boat and as we got closer he moved out to the side as we passed him and then he came right into our spread and then the port corner rod gave a short burst ZZZ, we did not want to hook up a Hammerhead Shark and so Erik started reeling in that line, but he was too late and the line went tight, the rod bent and line slowly peeled off the reel, nobody wanted to fight the Hammerhead Shark and Kurt decided he would accept the challenge, he got into the chair and Erik handed him the rod and Kurt stated winding and as he gave the rod the first pump, things changed somewhat and suddenly the reel was screaming and as it went into the backing we saw a Marlin tail walking behind the boat and realised that the Hammerhead fooled us all and we actually had a Marlin on and after a very hard fight we had a Black Marlin estimated at 150kg (330lb) by the boat, the fish was still strong and wiring was quite a challenge and it wasn’t much longer and we had released a Black Marlin. We still had a 4 hour trip to get back to port and had no further action as we headed back in. It was a wonderful day with some fantastic people and some awesome fishing, many thanks to all. Well done and congratulations to Kurt for successfully landing and releasing his first Marlin.
