Fishing Where Few Have Been Before … Part 4

Part 4: A touch of fatigue makes itself felt It kicks off with a slow start due to a touch of fatigue making itself felt amongst the anglers. Blayne opened the day’s angling with a lovely humpback emperor just before sunrise on his favourite Candy jig. Shortly after that a few rockcod and some bohars were enough to get the team to pull the anchor and start looking for some bigger, more serious action. For the first time, we saw some big shoals of fusiliers and they were looking very nervous. Blayne was the first to go away with a good fish on a Halco popper, which proved to be a solid 115 cm GT. Morgan in the meantime had been persisting with a subsurface stickbait and managed to get a 98 cm GT about 45 minutes later. Blayne got a bus bigeye on the same popper and all of us hooked and lost quite a few GTs and some more really good couta. By 09:30 Blayne was back onto the Iron Candy Sardine jig and after a dirty scrap of “It’s in the rocks, it’s out of the rocks, in the rocks again,” he eventually landed an absolute bucketmouth rockcod. No sooner had we got that fish back into the water with a pic or two than Duarte was rewarded with a GT of 108 cm on his Williamson popper. By 10:30 things had quietened down substantially and that ever-present lure of greener pastures was once again beckoning rather loudly. We decided to push on towards Silvia Shoal. At around midday we started to see bird action ahead of us. My bottle-green GT Ice Cream Needle Nose was instantly engulfed on the first cast and even though I was using a new reel with 30lb braid, the size of the tuna was way above my punching weight. After about 45 minutes with the fish nicely filmed on camera right up against the side of the boat, I managed to pop the split ring on the hook connection, sending the fish off on a very easy short line release. Knowing that we were definitely undergunned on the lighter tackle, I got a new 14000 reel out with a much more serious 5oz GT Ice Cream Needle Nose. With this outfit I was able to get my plug into the fish way before the others could reach and I was instantly on. I horsed the fish as much as possible and as it got closer to the boat, I told Blayne to throw his popper in its direction. Sure enough, on the first pop one of the following fish engulfed the lure and took off. Landing those fish a lot quicker on the heavier gear, we moved towards the next batch of birds and exactly the same sort of procedure followed. The longest cast was on in an instant and by this stage Morgan and Duarte were grabbing whatever GT Ice Creams they could find lying around and connecting them to the big guns. When Duarte asked me if he could use one of the big Needle Noses, I said he was more than welcome but was quite horrified when he took out one of my experimental “monster” GT Needle Noses. The thing is about 18 inches long and more suitable for beating fish on the head than being launched at busting tuna with a 14/0 Mustad Sea Demon on the back! But before I could say anything Duarte lobbed this lot out the side of the boat and almost before he could throw the bail arm over, it was engulfed by a tuna. At this stage I think the only people that were not fighting fish were the skipper, the cook and the cameraman. In a situation like this it is so easy to get the fever, very appropriately named viskoors in Afrikaans. It is an affliction which I know only too well and it was starting to get the better of me with this kind of action. I cannot remember whether I got three or four fish and the others were all onto their second or third one, when we had to call a halt to the proceedings. We had kept a badly hooked fish for more sashimi and tuna steak meals and could definitely not take another fish on board. Blayne with the bucket-mouth. We could also have stayed there all afternoon, having some mind-blowing topwater tuna fishing, but the ever-present greener pasture was calling. We were after all probably going to have these busting tuna for the rest of our trip, so best we start ignoring them now. This we did and soon found ourselves on the outskirts of the Silvia Shoal. We started seeing some local fishing boats and on the first island that we got to, there were quite a few people harvesting the reefs and fishing on small boats. Silvia was rather disappointing except for a sand island on the landward side, which was exposed over the low tide with a fairly deep channel running next to it. If we had a bit more time or if the tide had just been a bit lower, it would have been great to jump onto and spend some time with the shore game stuff, spinning up a few geets, snoek or couta. We decided to rather test it from the boat in passing and straight away hooked a snoek and had the ever-present giant garfish chasing our lures. Tuna mayhem. As it was starting to get a little late in the afternoon we decided to head on to the one island that we had some good info on, which was Fogo. Of all the islands in the Premeiras group, Fogo is by far the most attractive. A lodge had been erected on it some years before and an airstrip had been under construction. From what we could ascertain, one of the Mozambican partners had passed away and a cyclone had come through and flattened the lodge. The cyclone also managed to put the lodge’s multi-million rand Sportfisher high and dry up on the beach never to go to sea again. The lodge had subsequently been abandoned but we were very keen to spend some time on terra firma. Paolo’s snoek. We came around on the inside of the island and anchored about 100m offshore in the lee in what looked like a very nice anchorage. We immediately set about putting an expedition together to go and explore the island and try some fishing. We noticed a lot of smoke coming from the area where it looked as though the lodge had been and decided to go and investigate. By the time we got to shore we only had about two hours of daylight left so had to hastily make our way to the northern end of the island. When we got to the fire it was quite concerning to see that it was the lodge that had been set alight. Almost the entire lodge had been burnt and the fire had probably been burning for at least two days. There were footprints on the sand but no other sign of a human being. Duarte said there was a local fishing camp around the corner on the eastern side of the island. We did not have a good feeling about the fire and decided to steer clear of that area. We made our way back to the southern end of the island to film the wrecked Sportfisher on the beach and a Bell backhacker that was partially submerged in the water. We got a small greenspot kingie and lost some giant garfish before getting to the area close to where the backhacker was in the water. There was a shoal of baitfish here that did not look too agitated, but they had certainly attracted Morgan’s attention and we left him persevering around the baitfish while we went to go and film the Sportfisher. Blayne’s 115 cm GT. A shipwreck is one thing, but when you see what was obviously a magnificent boat laid to waste, half-buried on the beach, it definitely invokes some sadness. We explored a few of the run down little buildings, piles of timber and then followed a road from the shoreline which went towards the middle of the island. At this stage, darkness was almost upon us and walking up that road listening to the rustling of huge rats in the bush and watching them cross the road ahead, certainly gave one a bit of an eerie feeling. Before the light got too low, we ran back down the road to the beach (this was obviously the road from where a barge would discharge supplies for the lodge or to build the runway). As we got to Morgan he told us how he had hooked and lost what he thought was a good GT and before he could finish the story he went tight with another good fish. It seemed the small stinking stickbait was working well around that shoal of baitfish. By now it was completely dark and we were relying on the sungun on the movie camera to see what was going on. After a 10 to 15minute fight, a huge pickhandle barracuda rolled up in the shore break. It is a pity we did not get any stills of this fish or in fact of the rest of the island, but I think we all thought that we would be back there in the morning or the next day. Next trick was to get the rubberduck into a position in the surf so that the cameraman and his equipment could get on board without getting everything wet. As fate would have it the wrong wave at the wrong time meant that the camera bag ended up in the water for a split second. It was not a pleasant trip back to the yacht wondering whether the camera would still be working and whether we could save the footage taken that day. Back at the yacht we were very relieved when Dustin announced that all was well and we were still in business. It was a truly beautiful evening and we decided it was time for Paulo’s famous peri-peri chicken on the braai once again. While the food was being prepared, Morgan put a bait over the back and we took one of the deck lights and focused it on the water. I wish I had had a decent dip net as I counted four different species of squid that were operating in and out of the lights. Besides that, we could see shoals of fish, flying fish, garfish, halfbeaks and some really strange looking crustacean-type “goggos”, the likes of which I have never seen before. The life under the light that night was absolutely amazing. Before long Morgan got a pull on the bait and landed a decent rockcod. As we ate our meal we deliberated our plans for the rest of the trip. This was the first time we got a hint of a big westerly that would be coming within the next day or two. I think if we had not found the lodge burning we would definitely have decided to take the risk of staying on and exploring the island during the next day. What would influence our decision was the fact that the best fishing from a land based perspective was always going to be for a very short window period in the morning and then for a longer period in the late afternoon. We had already worked out that we could not really afford to hang around for the following afternoon session and decided that we would rather forsake the brief morning session and take our chances on some better action further up the coast. With some sadness and heavy hearts, we upped anchor just before midnight to sail through the night so that we could be in position for some of the big drop-offs that we were seeing on the chart first thing in the morning.

Fishing Where Few Have Been Before … Part 4

by Barry Wareham

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