We launched just after 08h00 from Durban Harbour, equipped with 4 fly rods. There was a light wind and the sea was mostly flat in the morning making for easy conditions to cast a fly rod. The water is still warm averaging at around 22.7 deg. C on the surface. Later on the wind turned and picked up a little but the conditions were still relatively flat.
I took my guest to some of the bait areas South of Durban and let him get his sea legs whilst casting the 6wt for some bait fish, this was fun and there was a lot of Mackerel around and many small bottom fish also readily took the fly. I got my first double hook up ever on fly (2 fish 1 fly) with 2 greedy little lizard fish.
We were now ready to get going for our target species which where Yellowfin Tuna and Eastern Little Tuna. We went out to deeper waters but I found virtually no surface activity, the 9 & 12wt rods were rigged with big flies on intermediate lines but there were no takers. I had noticed on the finder that all the fish were holding deep and so we switched to fast sinking lines which proved to be the correct choice as we immediately started hooking up small Eastern Little Tuna. We were treated to an aerial display by a large Manta Ray.
Realising that there were no Yellowfin Tuna around, which I found strange as there was a lot of Dolphin activity which usually signals that the Yellowfin Tuna are around, we switched over to the 6wt rods with sinking lines to make the smaller fish more sporting.
The smaller Eastern Little Tuna proved to be an awesome quarry on the 6wt fly rods and they gave us a few hours of great fun with several dual hook ups and in the end we must have landed about 2 dozen between us (I lost count) all in the 500 1500gr range. This is such an awesome way to go fishing and the Eastern Little Tuna really put up a good fight on the light fly tackle. I recommend this to anyone looking for a good time out at sea.
