Dorado, Wahoo, Tuna and tough weather
Offshore Fishing Report – Late January 2020
Since we got our Marlin the last 2 weeks of fishing has been very difficult and we have been busy with a lot of trips on all boats, water temperatures went almost up to 30 deg.C and I have never see water this warm straight out the harbour, in the harbour exceeded 32 deg.C. Strong NE winds and SW busters made for some rough seas on occasion and many days had both, one morning we were about to launch at 04h30 when a 38knot SW wind came through and we finally only launched at 11h00. After all the warm water things cooled down to big varieties of water temps from 22deg.C right up to 27deg.C in close proximity sadly the water has gone green, I hope this last SW has cleared this up. So with calms seas on occasion or during the day and some rocking and rolling, rain and many other challenges with guests from Czech Republic, Australia, UK, USA, Germany and good old SA we managed to get some fish but not as many as we wanted. Wahoo have now made their appearance, Dorado are still a regular catch and they are getting bigger now, we chuck the small ones back so they can grow, Tuna have been scarce but the ones we do get are quality sizes, Bonito have been few and far between and we have seen Marlin jumping and had them in the spread but no strikes, Dolphins have been regular visitors out in the deep. We saw something really incredible that I have never witnessed off Durban on our way back in a strong west from far North, we came across a shoal of over 200 GT’s from 30-50Kg, they were not scared of the boat but no matter what we offered them they would not bite, observing their behaviour it looked like they were spawning. We had some kiddies trips in the harbour and the fish were biting in the warm water so actually much easier than fishing offshore. With Marlin and Wahoo around I think we will see some nice catches coming up in the next 3 months.
