You never know until you see the colour…by Dave Sproston

You never know until you see the colour…by Dave Sproston

Memoirs: by Dave Sproston

Way back in 1990, I ran a small charter fishing operation from Shelly Beach, Kwazulu Natal. I skippered my own boat, a 17ft. Ace Craft with twin Yamaha 85’s, but maybe I will cover the specs of this amazing craft later on.Anyway, on this particular day I had two guys who had chartered the boat for the morning, we normally launched at first light and we’re back by lunchtime, and set off for the Protea Banks, a fifteen minute ride, to look for some YFT ( Yellowfin Tuna).

So after a successful couple of hours on the YFT we all decided to do a bit of bottom fishing, which is always great so the charters can have a bit of a mixed bag of fish, and I can save on a bit of petrol costs as well ! After arriving at “The Spot”, we rigged up the bottom rods and traces, baited up with Chokka and Sardine tippets and down we went. After landing a few Reds we noticed a massive shoal of baitfish around the boat, so, in with my bottom stick and out with my spinning rod, which is always rigged with a small white metal spoon , for just this scenario. And I went tight straight away…a medium size Bonito.

After quickly rigging the Bonito onto my heavy gamefish rod , the livey went straight back into the water, and with the three ounce sinker and rubber band attached, as a type of down rigger, I set the bait about twenty meters under the boat, and stuck the rod into the rod holder to carry on with the bottom fishing. Ten minutes later the livey rod started to scream that the TLD 25 went ballistic, quickly tightened up the lever drag, set the hook and gave the rod to the charter. Good fish on. Smiles all around as a heavy fight ensued .

Looking at the way the fish was fighting , and the way that line peeled off the reel, I reckoned that we were into a good size Couta (King Mackerel). Bang, the fish was off, long faces all around with the adrenalin still pumping, that’s fishing for you. After reeling in the line we found the leader was very badly chaffed, so assumed that we had probably lost the fish to a shark (which has extremely abrasive skin) Another day at the office !

Two weeks later, I was sitting at the Shelly Beach Ski Boat Club having a cold one with a good friend and charter skipper ,by the name of Dick , who came out with such a strange story, it gave me the shivers. So the story goes, from his lips, straight. He was fishing in the same area as where I lost the ‘shark’, two weeks before. He and his crew were all bottom fishing when one of the guys had a massive “On”. After a twenty minute fight, with the Cape Ski bottom rod and ten Inch Scarborough reel giving their all, a small Marlin came to the surface, plus minus fifty odd kilos. But the strange thing about the hook up was that their 3/0 bottom hook was not hooked directly to the Marlins mouth, but to, what seemed like a short piece of leader that was attached to an 9/0 hook which was actually hooked in the fish’s jaw. With a quick flip of the Marlins great tail, it threw the hook and was gone.

Now here’s the thing, and he produces a 9/0hook, with the same knots that I use, the same leader and the same Dacron loop that I used to tie on the Bonito live bait two weeks before. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When they reeled in the fish, their bottom 3/0 hook had actually hooked into the Dacron loop on the old 9/0 and this is what they had hauled the Marlin to the surface with, and because the 9/0 had probably started to wear loose in fish’s mouth, it had pulled free at the last moment, still attached to the crew’s bottom rig.

Quite unbelievable. What we had thought to be a shark, was actually a small Marlin. The hook now hangs in my workshop as a memoir.

Just goes to show that you never know what you have hooked until you see the colour.