Bazaruto Baitball Blowup

Bazaruto Baitball Blowup

The recent cyclone and weird weather may have had something to do with things but Bazaruto has been absolutely off the scale. Yellowfin tuna as far as you can see in every direction, with bonito and skipjack filling in any spaces.

And the marlin and sailfish are still around for a fight, it’s been one helluva billfish season up and down our coastline.

Here is a link –  Baitball Article – to a contribution Captain Duarte Rato of FishBazaruto, made to a great article that ran in the January issue of Voyages de Peche magazine.

The article, which is about bait balls or where and when large masses of bait come together along with its predators, was put together by Julien Lajournade, had as it´s collaborators Duarte along with well know photographers Jessica Haydahl Richardson (Yellowfin & blue runnes in Cobia Panama), Pat Ford (tarpon and others on mullet at vero beach Florida), Marc Montocchio (great photograph with tarpon and silversides in the Caymans) and Scott Kerrigan (on sailfish and sardines off Isle Mujeres – Mexico).

You can read and see more of Duarte’ss amazing experiences with these bait balls right here…

http://fishbazaruto.com/2016/09/29/amazing-bait-balls-bazaruto/

Bait balls – massive amounts of bait and predators – it is all happening at Bazaruto right now, here is an email I received from Duarte recently…

“Hey mate, hope all good…

As you know after the season I have chilling with the family and finalizing all the bookings for the rest of the year for Bazaruto and Cape Verde. But, after cyclone Dineo (which as you know was much kinder to us here in Vilankulos / Bazaruto than our friends further south in the Inhambane area) we finally have had a spell of absolutely gorgeous weather and my boys at Bazaruto told me about excellent light tackle game fishing. So, yesterday decided to take my boy (that´s Duarte´s oldest son which just turned 4 years and is obsessed with fishing – I hear he prefers to watch fishing videos than cartoons – wonder where he gets it from) out. Man, it was absolutely unbelievable from when we got to V-mile area yesterday morning until midafternoon when we come back was going mental. I think all the churning caused by the cyclone as just moved up all these nutrients and the ocean is alive everywhere you look. Between V mile all the way to the north of the Island at any given time you seeing 5 or more schools of Yellowfin tuna, skipjack and bonnies gorging themselves on tiny oceanic anchovy! It´s all small stuff (what we in season call bait) but great fun on the light tackle. Perfect stuff to target on the light spinning rods.

We had nonstop action from the start and everyone hooked up simultaneously all the time. It looks like a slaughter and we did take a lot of fish out but we released much more and we were all with our freezers empty and brought some fish back for the boys. Funniest thing was Duarte Jnr, who we have now nicknamed gaffman, who at a stage did not want to take any rod but just wanted to gaff the fish, every single one of them…hilarious! And he knows when they really small he was like ´´this one we throw back “! By 10am he was so tired he was falling asleep but kept being woken up by screaming reels and he just could not resist. To let him have a much-deserved nap (he did wake up at 4am), and despite the water being horrible dirty and green I decided to fish for Marlin for a couple hours. We first put a live YFT but that did not last long and we were hooked up to a shark within 20 minutes, which obviously woke him up againJ! I decided to put the lures and head out wide in search of blue water which was not to be seen up to 500 meters out! It was green and we never raised one, did get a decent wahoo for Rafi tough. When we come back early afternoon it was still going wild and the mayhem continued before we decided to call it a day at 3pm. We have a strong SE moving in on Sunday which should push in the blue water and I am sure some fish with a sharp nose with it…there is enough bait to make them come! Until then we will just have fun on the small stuff, back at it tomorrow…

Cheers mate…attached a couple of pics from yesterday. Back at it tomorrow, and the next day!!!””

Some guys have all the luck!

Thank you Duarte…

And now this…

After mastering the necessary gaffing skills to be on the boat with his Dad, young Duarte was seen at the helm of his first vessel – a surfboard, at Tofo!

To learn more about the FishBazaruto operation, click on over to http://fishbazaruto.com