We launched from Durban harbour at 04h45 for a 5hrs trip with the intention of targeting some Natal Snoek (Queen Mackerel) the was a stiff NE wind Blowing and the water surface temperature was 26 deg. C, the swell was large and over 2m and spaced at around 8 seconds.
It is also starting to get chilly in the mornings now.
We shot up North to Umgeni Mouth and started to set our Snoek spread and made our way north, but the swell there was huge and we were not able to get any closer into to shore that the 10-12m depth area, and this is not ideal for getting Snoek, I tried a little closer but the swell was to much for safety and comfort and I was scared that we would flip the boat over and decided to get away from the surf zone.
It was then decided that we would take the spinning tackle that we had rigged up and ready for the Snoek and we would target Eastern Little Tuna with this tackle, and this proved to be great fun and we landed around 19 of them in a short space of time. They are really good fun on light 10lb tackle, especially when we hooked up with 2 over the 3kg mark, but the rest were small.
I also rigged 1 of the ELT's as live bait on a Couta Trace on a trap stick off the back hoping for a Couta or something else nice, eventually the reel went zz zzzzz zz zz zz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and after around 1.5hrs fight and many more zzzzzzzzzzzzz's we brought a Black Tip Shark of around 150Kg next to the boat.
After this with sore arms, as all 3 of us had a go at the Shark we headed back to land. My camera got wet and is now dead, and so I am looking for another one, if anybody has a good one let me know.
