'Tailin Time!

Writing and photography by Grant Hall and Andrew Pegge

The day dawned... well, kind of. The early morning mist was pretty thick as we launched from Millers Point in False bay and headed south towards Cape Point in search of the powerful, hard fighting Cape yellowtail.

As we approached Buffels Bay, the sounder showed a good rise in water temperature so we moved slowly past Buffels and ran at about 5knots parallel to the coast towards Rooikrans. We had set two deep diver Rapalas about 20m behind the boat, spinning sticks at the ready. Andrew had drawn the short straw and had dibs on the first strike... no wait, there were no straws, he muscled his way to the back of the boat and stood guard over the trolling rods like a dog defends his bone.

We had been going along for 5 minutes or less trading tons of "valuable" ideas and tactics for the day ahead, when the starboard drag shrieked leading to panic, excitement and adrenalin pumping all over the place. Andrew grabbed the rod and began to work the fish with his usual finesse, testing the tackle to its limit. Half way through the tussle, there was a noticeable lack of head shakes and fish seemed to be behaving like a large lump of kelp. At that point the "lump of kelp" got a little excited at the sight of the boat and sounded at quite a rate, peeling the 12 kg line off the reel. After a few more bursts, Andrew managed to get the fish closer to the boat and we positively identified it as a good size yellow tail. Being "eco friendly" fishermen, we don’t believe in using gaffs and try to land the fish with as little harm to it as possible. Yellowtail however are slippery customers when it comes to boating them in a friendly manner, when you try to tail the 'tail, the tail just folds flat, unlike that of a GT or a garrick. It slipped through my hand and the fish headed off on another short run, followed by Andrew’s verbal commentary. Fortunately the drag was not to set too tight (for a change!), allowing the fish to burst off without parting the line. The second attempt, aided with a net was far more successful and finally we had our first yellowtail in the boat.

After getting the hooks untangled from the landing net (that proved to be too small for the fish), we promptly removed them and replaced them with 2 single hooks. We set the rods again and after a small "discussion" on trolling speed we continued towards Cape Point.

I had managed to get Andrew to man the helm and pushed my way past the "Gilly", Brad, and waited for the next strike. We hadn’t been on the move for very long when again the starboard drag screamed off at pace. I grab the rod and felt the strong, solid pull of a yellow tail. It felt like a good fish and it pulled hard against my huge muscular, finely tuned, fit body... it wasn’t long and I was asking for the bucket to support the rod butt and stop it from performing an appendectomy. After a short while, the fight just stopped and the fish seemed to come in much more easily. When it got to the boat we could see that it had been hooked in the tail and it was smaller fish than the one Andrew had landed just minutes earlier. That would explain the strong fight and sudden end to the fight!

We reset the rods and did a wide arc and began to head back towards Buffels. The mist was setting in again and at times we had only 50m visibility. I moved into lookout, standing on the hatch, elevating myself for what we thought was a better view. There were still many boats trolling and stationary boats spinning in the area, so we had to keep a sharp eye as we moved along between 4.5 to 5 knots. Things went a bit quiet for a while, and Brad sat at the back waiting in anticipation for the next hit. We decided to stop and spin for while, as we couldn’t see a helluva lot in the early morning mist. The stationary, blind spinning proved to be fruitless so we set off again, lures in tow back towards the Point. We hadn’t moved 50m when the port reel burst into song. Brad grabbed the wrong rod. After a bit of deep sea banter, I grabbed the right rod and handed it to him. He was into a pretty good fish and it was heading off at a rate of knots. Brad put his back into it and seemed to make little erotic grunting noises (I presume they were erotic) as he tussled with a good size 'tail. Brad got his fish to the boat and I successfully tailed it, followed by another photo shoot.

The first 3 fish we decided to keep for the coals, we caught a further 5 yellowtail, which we successfully revived and released. We respect the ocean and try to promote eco-wise, responsible fishing at all times. We continued to troll, and had a good few more strikes, this time we took our time while bringing the fish to the boat, as the rest of the herd stay with the hooked fish which gave us a shot at casting spoons and drop shot at them. Andrew hooked up once or twice, the hook up was solid and powerful and far more personal than a trolling strike. After that little exercise I had reservations about using the bass rod I had brought along, not to mention the 9wt fly rod we had stashed on board. I think we would have eventually landed a fish on the very light tackle, but the fight would have exhausted the fish to a non returnable state... plus the rod may have just snapped into a few pieces, which is one of Andrews favourite pasttimes! Fly fishing is on the agenda when we next meet the Cape yellow tail... but I will be armed with a 12wt which should be a far better match for these incredibly powerful game fish.

The "Common Sea Fishes of Southern Africa" by Rudy van der Elst (published in 1981), lists the then SA angling record at 33.1kg and the world record at 50.3kg – but I’m sure these have changed since. So the fish we were catching were definitely lightweights and I cannot imagine how hard the "real 'tail" really pull and how long it would take us to land fish of that size on the light tackle we were using.... if at all.

Check back here regularly for more of Grant and Andrews offshore antics!

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